


Truth to Triumph

by RZZMG



Series: Hermione x Draco stories [42]
Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Blackmail, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Emotional Manipulation, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Falling In Love, Family Drama, Family Secrets, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gender Roles, Hogsmeade, Hogwarts Seventh Year, Manipulation, Mates, Samhain, Secrets, Soul Bond, Valentine's Day, Writing, Yule Ball
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 11:33:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 25,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12058140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RZZMG/pseuds/RZZMG
Summary: “It’s all a game, Hermione—one you must learn how to play if you’re ever to snag a well-to-do husband someday.”-- Hermione Granger is determined not to live the life her wretched mother expects of her. That includes not falling in love with the rich, powerful, sexy, clever Draco Malfoy, who also happens to be Pansy Parkinson's boy-toy.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Feyre/Rhysand from "A Court of Thorns and Roses" series.   
> Background: On the magical island of Prythian, the human realm and the Fae (fairy) realm were separated by a magical wall. Feyre and her two sisters (the fiery, vicious Nesta and the gentle, sweet-tempered Elain) were humans who grew up hating the Fae. When she kills one, the Fae High Lord of the Spring Court, Tamlin, crosses the wall and demands Feyre become his in recompense for the death of his best soldier at her hands. She enters the fairy lands a prisoner, but eventually falls in love with Tamlin and befriends his second in command, Lucien. Unfortunately, Prythian is under the contol of an evil fairy named Amarantha, Queen Under the Mountain. The High Lords from the other fairy courts (Summer, Autumn, Winter, Dawn, Day, and Night) and all their people are also her prisoners. When Amarantha learns of Feyre, she begins tormenting her. The High Lord of the Night Court, Rhysand, is Amarantha's whore. Like a good infiltrator and spy, though, he isn't what he appears to be, and he befriends Feyre with the intention of helping her behind the scenes to bring his mistress down. Things come to a head and Amarantha eventually kills Feyre. However, before she dies, Feyre frees Tamlin and all of Prythian from Amaranatha by breaking her curse, and so Tamlin kills Amarantha. Feyre is resurrected by magic and reborn as a High Fae female. After that, suffering a form of PTSD, Tamlin becomes overly-controlling of Feyre, locking her away "for her own good" (done under the advice of a power-hungry and wicked priestess named Ianthe, who has recently come to the Spring Court to give Tamlin spiritual and political guidance). When Rhysand frees her, the two escape together to the Night Court, where she meets her 'saviour's' friends: Cassian, Azriel, and Morrigan. Over time, Feyre realizes that what she felt for Tamlin was an immature love, one based on desperation for affection (as she'd lived in emotional isolation for most of her life, as her father was a broken man after his wife died, and her sisters were suffering under the weight of poverty and starvation, too). She and Rhysand become friends, and then it is revealed that Feyre is really Rhysand's destined bond mate of the soul (something Rhysand knew, but kept from Feyre until she was healed from Tamlin's abuse). The two fall in love and mate. Meanwhile, Tamlin has become unhinged, determined to forcibly take Feyre back to the Spring Court, regardless of her wishes. At the same time, a fairy King from the island of Hybern to the west begins his plans to conquer Prythian, and he's twice as powerful as Amarantha had been. Feyre, Rhysand, Cassian, Azriel, Morrigan, and others join together to fight off the combined armies of Tamlin and Hybern. To do this, they unite the Courts (who have historically always been at each other's throats), and enlist the aid of various monsters around Prythian (the Suriel and the Bone Carver). 
> 
> This is an Alternate Universe fic (Voldemort was never resurrected after dying in 1981 when his Killing Curse cast at Harry rebounded upon him, no horcruxes were ever made; Hermione attended Beauxbatons for the first 6 years of her education before coming to Hogwarts to finish & is sorted in Slytherin House)
> 
> This is primarily a "Harry Potter" fic with some elements of ACOTAR thrown in. 
> 
> "Harry Potter" series is copyright J.K. Rowling and Scholastic Books. "A Court of Thorns and Roses" series by Sarah J. Maas is copyright her and her publisher.
> 
> Cast of Characters corresponding to ACOTAR characters:  
> Hermione Granger = Feyre  
> Draco Malfoy = Rhysand  
> Pansy Parkinson = Amarantha  
> Cormac McLaggen = Tamlin  
> Blaise Zabini = Cassian  
> Theodore Nott = Azriel  
> Astoria Greengrass = Morrigan  
> Harry Potter – Greysen  
> Ron Weasley = Lucien  
> Ginny Weasley = Nesta Archeron  
> Luna Lovegood = Elain Archeron  
> Seamus Finnigan = Issac Hale  
> Lavender Brown = Vassa  
> Crookshanks = The Bone Carver & The Suriel (combined)  
> Mrs. Granger = Ianthe  
> Mr. Granger = Mr. Archeron

**_~.~.~.~.~_ **

**_Prologue_ **

**_~.~.~.~.~_ **

“It’s all a game, Hermione—one you must learn how to play if you’re ever to snag a well-to-do husband someday.”

Rolling my eyes, I made no bones of what I felt about my mother’s gender-stereotypical contention that a woman’s primary functions in life were to serve as a man’s arm ornament, a receptacle for his lusty needs, and a breeder of his seed.

Of course, my mum ignored the stubborn set of my jaw and the hard gleam in my eyes as those were attributes of my father reflected in my genes, and she gave them about as much respect as she did her husband.

“Now, the moment you appear before your classmates to stand in line for that port-a-key thing-”

“Portkey,” I corrected her.

She frowned at my interrupting, her thin lips pursing with disapproval. “That line will reflect the intended social hierarchy for this year. The other girls will all be jockeying for a position of power and dominance while standing around and deciding turns, willing to shed blood, if need be, to garner the most attention from the cream of the male crop watching nearby.”

“Do you expect me to shove them over?” The thought did appeal, especially if the girls at Beauxbatons Academy were as vapid and vain as the woman who’d birthed me. “Stomp one or two of the loudest cluckers into the mud, and then crow to proclaim myself the new queen of the hen house?” I shook my head. “What kind of person do you take me for, Mother?”

I was stirring up quite a hornet’s nest with my backtalk, I knew, but since my father would say nothing in my defence, adequately cowed as he was to my mother’s authority in our house, it would be up to me to hiss at her a warning when she came close to crossing the line.

“Sarcasm is an unattractive trait, Hermione,” she primly chastised me.

“Because it’s a sign of intelligence?”

“Because it’s a sign of disobedience,” she countered while carving up her chicken. “As I was saying, it’s vital that you distinguish yourself from the start as belonging to a higher class of female.” Her sharp, grey eyes honed in on me from across the table. “Slouching and poor posture will not accomplish that goal.”

With a resentful sigh, I threw my shoulders back and straightened my spine. This lecture wouldn’t end until my mother had decided I was behaving like a perfect, little puppet, so it was best to play along for the moment. The faster we could move past this uncomfortable part, the sooner I could get back to ignoring her and return to my reading upstairs.

“Good manners are the way of the real world, young lady. You’d better learn that lesson at that expensive French school we’re sending you to, or you’ll never find a man to master you.”

Master me.

That was the last straw.

Throwing my napkin down next to my plate and discarding my fork, I abruptly stood. Ignoring my mother’s ice-cold demand that I sit back down or else, I turned and marched back up to my bedroom, stomping all the way. I slammed the door shut behind me and locked it.

From the bed, my familiar looked up and yawned. _“The hag’s just bitter that she settled on a dentist when what she really wanted was to be waited upon by servants,”_ he told me. _“She’s hoping you’ll marry rich so she can still achieve that dream someday.”_

 _“I’m aware,”_ I replied with a bitter edge.

That was the problem with Kneazle hybrids: they were too smart for their own good. Not only did they have intelligence on par with humans, they still had some of the magic of their full-blooded kin. In Crookshanks’ case, his abilities included telepathic communication with his caretaker.

 _“Don’t let her throw you to the hounds for the sake of her desires, Mistress Mine,”_ he said while cleaning a paw. _“You’re destined for greater things.”_

Throwing my window open and parting the curtains, I let night’s cool breeze soothe my temper, let it steal the tears from my eyes, leaving them clear to gaze upon the waning crescent moon far above.

The way my mother spoke about relationships turned me off to the entire concept. I didn’t want to marry for money or status. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I even _wanted_ to marry at all.

Regardless, one thing I did know for certain: I would never, _ever_ let any man be my master. I would have a mate who viewed me as an equal or I would continue to be happily unattached. I vowed as much to the bright, silent stars above as I looked up upon their majesty and dared to dream of a life outside of the one my mother envisioned for me.


	2. Chapter 2

**_~.~.~.~.~_ **

**_Seven years later…_ **

**_~.~.~.~.~_ **

Transferring to Hogwarts might have been the worst mistake of my life.

It had only been a month since I’d arrived, but as I knelt where I’d tripped and fallen, I quickly checked the lacerations on my hands; they were bleeding badly enough that they’d require a trip to Madam Pomfrey’s office. Another one, that was.

This would be the third time over the last two weeks I’d ended up in the Hospital Wing as a result of bullying from the ‘hen peckers’. Eventually, the teachers were going to step in, which was something I absolutely did not want. Bad enough people here thought me strange, with my academic achievement and my wild curls and my Muggle clothing. I didn’t need them also calling me a snitch and a crybaby.

A chorus of donkey braying filled the corridor behind me, taunting and cruel.

“So graceless and clumsy, Granger,” Pansy Parkinson—self-proclaimed ‘Queen Under the Mountain’ as the established alpha female of Slytherin House—called out as she turned to lead her troop of degenerate cronies away from the scene of the crime before a teacher happened across them and began asking questions. Before she rounded the corner and was out of sight, however, she added, “But then I’d expect nothing less from a no-count Mudblood.”

Then she and her pack were gone, and the mad cackling fading out behind them.

I gritted my teeth, biting back on the hexing spells that tickled my tongue and begged for use. I couldn’t afford to get kicked out of this school, too. Being marched out of Beauxbatons by Madam Maxine at the end of the last school year had been humiliating enough for one lifetime, and I’d been most fortunate Headmaster Dumbledore had been kind enough to allow me entrance to his institution to continue my education.

 _“You are too arrogant, too ambitious,”_ the Headmistress had told me when I’d asked why I was being booted out of school. _“You are attracted to darkness.”_

As if such was a sin. Those attributes were Slytherin House’s bloody _motto_ , and yet no one at Hogwarts saw such things as an obstacle to teaching their lot. And really, it wasn’t as if I was even interested in dark magic. I’d just been reading up on it to know how to recognise and counter it, should it ever come knocking on my door. Having lived in a co-ed school for six years, with a quarter of the population able to claim a Veela heritage, I’d seen the aftermath of more than one sexual assault in my time and had merely wanted to protect myself.

Apparently, though, Madam Maxine felt that spells causing permanent erectile dysfunction weren’t appropriate to use against rapists.

 _Feh_. Nonsense.

Using a non-verbal spell to call my wand to my hand, I gathered up the books that had spilled when I’d fallen and repaired the broken strap of my satchel.

That intense concentration is the only excuse I had for allowing someone to sneak up on me.

“Where’d you learn how to do that so well, girlie? Non-verbal spells are hard to master.”

I recognised the voice instantly and shuddered with dread.

Oh, joy. It was the King of Smug and Condescension, Cormac McLaggen.

Adjusting my mended satchel across my shoulder, I ignored the pain in my bloodied hands and snubbed the blond boytoy nearby who was determined to ruin what was left of my night. Deviating from my intended plan to visit the library, I instead headed for the Grand Stairwell to cross over to the opposite side for a visit to the school’s Healer-Nurse.

“Hey, I asked you a question!” McLaggen called after me as I left him in my dust.

“Sod off,” I growled at him and quickened my pace. Frankly, I was in no mood for his harassment today. The git had been after me to be his girlfriend from the first day I’d set foot in the Great Hall. As if I’d date while still in school—much less date a man who’d been kept back a year for his lazy academic performance! “I’ve told you twice already, I’m not interested! Leave me alone!”

Hot on my heels, despite my attempt to shake him by jumping across a roving staircase before it had stopped moving, the self-professed ‘Lion of Gryffindor’ refused to take the hint and bugger off. He caught up with me easily, in fact, leaping from staircase to landing with a beast’s agility. He reached out, grabbing hold of my arm to stop me.

My wand was at his throat a beat later.

As I stared up at my opponent, I was struck with a tremendous wave of revulsion. McLaggen was one of those affluent, haughty, _preening_ types of boys I’d known back in France; the kind who were as obnoxious as peacocks, but with half the smarts. Rather than engage in normal courting behaviours, they achieved their aims with a single-minded persistence that was more about conquest, and less about respect, wearing women down until they tired and simply gave in. If such tactics failed, however, they were quick to use force to punish the object of their desire, taking their satisfaction at the same time.

Looking into his golden eyes, I _knew_ McLaggen was considering his odds and waiting for my guard to drop.

Before I could act to put him out of commission so I could escape, however, a pale hand holding a wand suddenly appeared from behind my attacker…and the tip of said wand pointed directly at McLaggen’s temple.

“Oh!” I said, right as someone else said, _“Stupefy!”_

A red light flared before my eyes and Gryffindor’s star Quidditch Keeper went down, unconscious, smacking his head rather hard on the stone floor as he crumpled in on himself.

Draco Malfoy stood before me, expertly twiddling his wand between his fingers and, in my estimation, looking entirely too pleased with himself for getting the drop on a House rival.

“There you are. I've been looking for you.”

He glanced down at McLaggen’s unconscious form, a feral smile curling his lips. 

“Thank you for finding her for me.” In a move that shocked me with its sudden ferocity, he drew his leg back and kicked the insensate boy hard in the belly. “However, I’m afraid that’s ten points from Gryffindor for running through the corridors and jumping across stairwells.” His Prefect badge glimmered in the torchlight as he said it, lending him an air of authority. “And another ten points for harassing a fellow student.” The second blow landed in the same spot, and I knew McLaggen was going to hurt later when he woke up in hospital. I wasn’t in the least bit sorry about that, either. “And this is for being a disgusting lecher,” he added, landing a solid footballer’s kick to McLaggen’s ribs. I was sure something must have broken that time and winced, knowing how such a thing felt from personal experience, having fallen off a broom during my first attempt to fly when I was twelve. “‘No’ means fucking ‘no’,” he continued on with a sadistic grin. “You might want to learn it, you ignorant troll.”

I looked up in surprise at Parkinson’s boyfriend and thought I might faint on the spot. Was Malfoy actually defending me—and that _after_ he’d helped me get out of a scrape that might have ended in my expulsion?

It took a moment longer for me to get my mind adequately wrapped around the idea: the boy who usually sat back to watch the show whenever his female Housemates decided to make a meal out of me for their amusement had apparently come swooping in to my rescue tonight like that Dark Knight fellow from the comics, bat wings and all.

That was almost a _literal_ interpretation, as I knew Malfoy was sporting a set of some rather impressive looking membranous wings that were attached to his shoulder blades and hidden by an extremely strong glamour. I’d seen them the first week of term when I’d sneaked into the Prefect’s bath for a quick shower, hating using the communal one in the girl’s dorms. I’d rounded the corner, anticipating a good, hot soak in the bubble tub, and instead I’d come face-to-face with a half-breed masquerading as a pure-blood.

I wondered if that was why Malfoy never actively participated in the antagonism that the coven of Slytherin witches instigated against me on a regular basis—because he feared I’d tell the world that his ‘ancient and pure lineage’ was actually as ‘tainted’ as Professor Hagrid’s…

“Was this a bribe?” I asked him, indicating the pile of refuse on the floor at our feet. “Guaranteed silence from me regarding…you know.” I couldn’t help but look over his shoulders, seeking any hint of a shimmer in the air, but the glamour was flawless. Was it fairy in origin, I wondered.

Malfoy’s lips curled upwards with a sexy, feline smile. “If you want.”

I looked down at McLaggen where he lay. “Then give him another kick for me, right where it counts, and I’ll keep my lips sealed until the end of the school year,” I agreed.

Turning away, I continued on towards the Hospital Wing.

Behind me, the heavy _‘whump’_ that accompanied Malfoy’s foot meeting McLaggen’s bollocks made me smile. The result might not be as satisfying as a permanent erectile dysfunction hex, but it was gratifying nonetheless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines borrowed (some altered) from “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series and altered for this chapter's use:
> 
> “It’s like a game… All these pieces, vying for power or dominance, willing to shed blood, if need be.”   
> – Ianthe, A Court of Mist and Fury
> 
> “There you are. I've been looking for you. Thank you for finding her for me.”   
> – Rhysand, A Court of Thorns and Roses


	3. Chapter 3

**_~.~.~.~.~_ **

The piece of paper fell out of my Charms textbook into my lap.

With caution, I opened it.

**_Have you seen McLaggen today? He’s a bit blue. Or rather, his balls are._ **

The lettering disappeared as soon as I’d read it.

I couldn’t help the giggle that escaped my lips, but immediately slapped my hand over my mouth, as we were in the middle of class. Fortunately, no one paid any attention to me as Flitwick was talking again about the day’s lesson.

I shoved the note under my book, but there was enough of it peeking out that I could see if my mysterious new friend—Malfoy, I suspected, as he was the only one who knew what had happened yesterday to my stalker—wrote more. Then, I turned back to the day’s lesson.

By the end of class, I noted there was more scribbling on the blank piece of parchment. Apparently, it had a Concealing and Revealing Charm on it that was attuned only to me, for the moment I brushed my fingers across the paper, writing appeared on it.

**_I’m bored. Entertain me, Granger._ **

Yes, it was definitely Malfoy writing to me.

After our bizarre bonding moment last night, I’ll admit to being curious as to what he was really after here. Slytherins never did anything without ulterior motive. Was this all a game invented by Parkinson in an attempt to lure me in and humiliate me further using her boyfriend, or was this just Draco out for a laugh at my expense?

I decided to play along and find out.

I hurried out of the room and into an empty side classroom, got out my quill and ink, and scribbled a response.

**_Malfoy? Is that you?_ **

A few moments later, the reply came back, and I could just hear that snarky arsehole’s voice saying what was being written before my eyes.

**_No, it’s the Lord of Nightmares. Yes, it’s me, Granger. Who else would charm paper to get your attention around here?_ **

It was difficult to resist a smile as he attempted to be charming.

 ** _Why aren’t you in class?_** I asked.

**_Break until 1pm. Until then, it’s up to you to make sure my brain doesn’t melt._ **

I chuckled. He was quite the cheeky monkey, wasn’t he?

**_I’ve never heard of a spell that can cause your grey matter to spontaneously liquefy, so I’m assuming your problem is environmental?_ **

His reply was immediate, and I could almost feel his irritation.

**_I’m forced to watch Blaise obsessively mope over the She-Weasel. You know that redheaded Gryffindor Chaser? He’s completely arse over kettle for her. It’s nauseating._ **

I snorted.

**_No more nauseating than watching you and Parkinson hang all over each other._ **

His response was predictable.

**_Jealous?_ **

**_Keep dreaming._ **

**_Keep giving me things to dream about._ **

That made me frown.

**_What does that even mean?_ **

**_It means, my sexy little snakette, that since the first time we met, thoughts of you have given my hand quite the work-out at night._ **

“Ew.”

I threw the quill down.

Immediately, I picked it back up.

**_Pig._ **

He was quick to reply again.

**_It’s perverted to admit I find you attractive?_ **

Alright, he had a point. Still, thinking that he was masturbating to thoughts of me, a complete stranger really, was crossing the line.

**_We don’t even know each other!_ **

**_Isn’t that rather the point of this note play? We talk, we learn._ **

**_Being lecherous is not talking,_** I argued.

**_It’s not? Alright then, how has your day been so far? Is that better?_ **

Now I was even more uncomfortable. It almost seemed too personal to tell him even the most mundane of my private thoughts.

 ** _Why aren’t you studying?_** I asked, attempting to distract the conversation away from me. **_We have N.E.W.T.s this year. You should be preparing for those._**

**_I’d much rather hear about your day._ **

**_Your life must be quite dull._ **

**_Did you miss the part where I said I was watching Zabini mope for fun?_ **

Now I did laugh out loud. Malfoy was amusing, despite being a twit. And he was a horrible flirt.

_“It’s all a game, Hermione…”_

Perhaps I could play this game with him, at least until I knew what he really wanted from me. Dipping my quill into my ink pot, I pressed its tip to the charmed parchment and began to write.

**_My day’s been interesting so far…_ **


	4. Chapter 4

**_~.~.~.~.~_ **

The library was bustling in the middle of October on a Tuesday night. It was almost closing time, but the place was packed with students of all ages, frantically finishing up their assignments. Madam Pince was, I bet, in heaven listening to all the scratching quills and the turning of reference pages.

I was in my favourite seat in a secluded nook by the back. It was only large enough for one person, and it faced the window. Like the others in the room, I was scribbling furiously, but unlike them, I wasn’t doing homework.

After finishing my reply on the charmed paper, I waited for Malfoy’s response.

 ** _You really invented a hex for that?_** He wrote, and I could just hear him snickering. **_Remind me never to get you angry._**

**_What about you? What spells are you best at casting?_ **

**_Guess_** , he challenged me.

**_Charms, obviously. Glamours._ **

His reply this time was delayed a bit, as if he had either been interrupted or was considering what to write back. He opted for brevity.

**_Go on._ **

**_Stunners._ **

I was recalling how easily he’d taken down McLaggen a few weeks back, and realised I was grinning like a loon at the memory when his reply finally appeared on the paper after another delay.

**_You forgot my best spell of all._ **

It took a moment for me to understand what he was referring to.

**_Yes, this is a clever invention you have here. I have to wonder how you charmed the parchment so it only responds to you and me, however. No one else seems to see anything we write on it._ **

I knew because Professor McGonagall had caught me writing on it in class one day, but when she’d used a Revelio Charm upon it to call up its secrets, nothing had appeared. It seemed to be resistant to such spells.

 ** _What spell did you use?_** I persisted, truly interested in how he’d accomplished such an advanced piece of magic.

**_What would you say if I told you it’s not a spell to be found in books, but…elsewhere?_ **

I considered that.

**_An oral tradition, you mean? Passed down through ancient families, like yours?_ **

**_Passed down, yes, but not exactly in the way you’re thinking_** , he replied.

**_Could you be any less vague?_ **

Here, there was another lengthy pause before his reply.

 ** _What if I told you it’s a kind of magic born from the stars and conveyed in dreams_** , he asked and I thought it was very likely that he was making a joke about my well-known dislike for Divination.

**_Very poetic. I’d say you’re starting to sound like Trelawney._ **

I could almost hear him sighing at my sass.

 ** _Fine. It’s just a series of spells layered together and attuned to our magical auras_** , he confessed.

**_Connecting us magically, you mean? But that would require you had access to my blood…_ **

The lighthearted nature of this form of communication was suddenly suspect, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d been played a jape after all, but for a much darker purpose than even I’d suspected. Was it even Malfoy I’d been talking to all this time?

His answer was delayed by several minutes, during which time I contemplated packing things up and burning the parchment, severing all ties to whoever was on the other end.

Finally I received an answer.

**_Protean Charm combined with a Fidelius Charm would also do the trick. Quite effective in connecting two things and in keeping others from discovering its secret._ **

That sounded plausible.

Ingenious, really.

Still, I felt shaken by doubt now that it had reared its ugly head. There was only one way to reassure myself.

**_Come to the place where I discovered your secret. We need to talk face-to-face. Tonight. Eleven o’clock._ **

**_That’s after curfew_** , he rightly reminded me.

I was willing to take the risk.

**_You’re a Prefect. Make it happen. I have to go, the library’s closing. See you in two hours._ **

 

* * *

 

At eleven o’clock sharp, he was waiting for me in the Prefect’s bathroom alright.

Naked, surrounded by colourful bubbles in the big tub, he gave me a naughty smile as I walked in and stopped on a Sickle at the sight of him enjoying a bath. His wings were fully visible, as he’d removed the glamour on them.

“You said make it happen,” he explained as I crossed my arms and glared down at him. “I simply made the excuse that I was stiff after practice earlier and needed a long, hot soak. The things people in this castle will let you get away with in the name of Quidditch… So, here I am, at your command, my lady.”

I sighed at his insolence. “You’re shameless.”

“Just figuring that out, are you?” He playfully splashed some water my way, but I stepped easily out of the path and avoided my shoes getting wet. “Now, what was so urgent you couldn’t wait to get me here and see me with my clothes off?”

Rolling my eyes, I knelt down so I wouldn’t be yelling things in a room that had a tendency to echo, even with a _Muffliato_ cast at its door to mute the sound. I noticed Malfoy’s eyes automatically dropped to my bared knees. I gave him an arch look and covered them with my arms as I hunched down.

“Tell me the truth: is it you behind the parchment or someone else? Are you tricking me into letting my guard down so you can humiliate me later? I should warn you not to lie about this. I can handle the truth, but a lie… I can’t forgive that.” I pointed my wand at the water where he stood. “A simple Lightning Hex and your innards will be boiling for the next month, and there is no pain potion to take for it. Choose wisely which way you step next.”

I watched his eye widen with astonishment, but I sensed no fear or deceit from him when he said, “It’s only for you and me, I swear! No one else knows. No one else can see.”

“How did you accomplish that without my blood for the spell?”

“Your hands…you were bleeding the night McLaggen accosted you.”

Yes, I had been. It’s why I’d headed for the Hospital Wing in the first place. “You collected it from the floor where it dripped?”

He nodded.

Huh.

“Clever,” I conceded.

“Thanks.” He brushed some bubbles around him. “Now that we’ve settled that… You can be quite scary, you know.”

I shrugged. “Why do you think they booted me from Beauxbatons?”

His smirk was filled with wicked approval. “Care to join me, love? There’s plenty of room for two.”

I stood up and brushed my uniform back into place, removing the wrinkles. “Far be it for me to come between you and your ego, then. Ta-ta.”

His laughter followed me to the door.

“Oh, and Malfoy, if I find you are playing me for the fool,” I warned him over my shoulder, all joking aside, “I can be much more creative than a simple Lightning Hex…as you already know.”

“Threats aren’t conducive to actually forming an alliance, you know,” he said with a sensual laugh, completely unconcerned with the threat of having his insides twisted around like balloon animals. That was what convinced me at last that he wasn’t using the parchment as a means to ferret out my secrets for Parkinson’s later use. “How are we to become good friends at this rate?”

After sneaking back into my dormitory in the dungeon, behind my closed and warded curtains I took up the parchment once more, deeming it safe to continue this odd new friendship with someone who should be, by all rights, my enemy. Perhaps there was some kind of poetic irony there I should examine later, but at that moment all I could do was recall his rather romantic sounding jest that our connection was somehow preordained by the cosmos. It was foolishness, of course, but there had been a piece of me that had found it a charming flattery nonetheless.

Dipping my quill into my precariously balanced ink pot, I wrote upon the paper a final message for the evening to him:

**_Draco,_ **

**_To the people who look at the stars and wish…_ **

**_Good night._ **

The next morning, I found he’d written me a return message:

**_Granger,_ **

**_To the stars who listen — and the dreams that are answered._ **

**_Good morning._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines borrowed (some altered) from “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series and altered for this chapter's use: 
> 
> “The first,” I clarified, “doesn’t sound conducive to actually forming an alliance.”   
> – Feyre, A Court of Wings and Ruin
> 
> "To the people who look at the stars and wish…"  
> \- Feyre, A Court of Mist and Fury
> 
> "To the stars who listen — and the dreams that are answered."  
> \- Rhysand, A Court of Mist and Fury


	5. Chapter 5

**_~.~.~.~.~_ **

Samhain Bonfire was a uniquely Scottish wizarding tradition.

At Hogwarts, it was a costume party-slash-pep assembly as it was celebrated at the height of Quidditch season, and everyone was talking House pride. The sports arena served as the site for the merrymaking; various piles of detritus—dead leaves the Grounds Keeper had raked up and any trees that had been felled by age or weather over the last few months—were gathered on the sandy floor of the pitch and burned once the sun went down. Revelers travelled between a dozen _banefyres,_ greeting friends, singing songs, drinking pumpkin juice, and indulging in sweets. People dressed in all manner of Halloween-themed fashion, from angels to skeletons to exotic creatures.

I’d come as the High Lady of Night, dressed in a repurposed black ball gown that fell to my feet and covered to the wrist, with just a hint of décolletage to give it some pizazz. A simple enchantment had conjured a set of black succubus wings for my back and another allowed the crystals on an old tiara set on my head to glimmer and wink like actual stars. I’d let my curly hair fall free from its usually restrained plait, feeling a ‘wild Fae’ look would better suit the purposes of the costume, for the High Lady of Night was also called Maev, Queen of the Unseelie Fairies.

So far, no one had correctly guessed my identity; I’d mainly been pegged for a Vampiress.

On one of the food and drink tables situated on the edge of the sand line, I grabbed a bottle of ice-cold Butterbeer and turned to watch the festivities, content to sit on the sidelines now that I’d walked the field once. Avoiding that harpy, Parkinson, was at the top of my list for tonight, so I kept her in my peripheral vision and stayed away from my fellow Slytherins.

Between one blink and the next, Draco stepped out of the shadows behind me, appearing at my elbow. He was dressed all in black leather and his wings were fully visible to the public. I was betting he was passing them off as part of his costume and secretly laughing behind his face at everyone’s ignorance.

Our conversations via parchment had continued for the last several weeks, growing increasingly more provocative. The two of us danced carefully around the line between proper conversation and indecent innuendo, he closer to it than I. I’d maintained a certain protective distance, still wary of his interest in me while he was dating the scourge of Hogwarts. Still, it had been nice to have someone to confide into a certain degree. I’d even begun thinking of Draco as a friend, which was odd for me, as I didn’t have many in my life. Most people found me too prickly or like my mother, too ‘swotty’ and unfeminine, so it was somewhat disarming and at the same time, encouraging that Malfoy seemed eager to get to know me better. It made me feel ‘normal’ for the first time in my life.

That didn’t mean we didn’t enjoy antagonizing each other at every opportunity. It seemed to be our thing.

“Hello, Granger, darling,” he purred, giving me the once-over. “You’re looking particularly gorgeous tonight.”

“You’re looking dapper yourself,” I replied, noting that he did look quite handsome. “But your cologne—is that _eau d’moufette_ you’re wearing?” I wrinkled my nose in keeping with the performance. “It’s quite fragrant.”

He really didn’t smell like skunk; I was just ribbing him. The fragrance he was wearing tonight was actually quite masculine, something both dark and spicy. It smelled delectable and made me all-too aware of how close he was standing.

He laughed at my jab and I had to admit, the sound did things to my libido that should have been illegal. Even more arousing, however, was that Malfoy could speak French. That skill only made our banter sessions even more fun, I had to admit. There was something almost erotic about insulting him in a foreign language that had originally been designed to seduce the auditory senses.

“No, love, they were fresh out Mephitidae today,” he informed me, and I was impressed he knew the Muggle scientific name for skunks. “I went with Amortentia instead. It’s much easier to brew.” He leaned into me, presenting his neck for me to sniff. “Do you like it?”

I did. Practically every girl there most likely did, too, and he well knew it.

“Smells like ‘irritating git’ to me,” I told him.

He laughed again. “You cruel, beautiful thing. You do Dark Maev justice.”

I was surprised he’d guessed my costume. “How did you know who I was?”

His smile was enigmatic when he held his hand out to me. “Walk with me, my Granger.”

I felt a momentary panic. There was a look in his eye that told me he was going to push that line between us a little further tonight if I let him, and I wasn’t sure I wanted that. Harmless flirtation I could handle, but more? “Actually, I’m calling it an evening,” I said and set my half-empty Butterbeer bottle on the table behind me as I turned to leave. “Have fun with Parkinson, though. I’m sure she’ll happily take care of whatever needs you might have tonight.”

I was halfway back to the castle, following the lighted path towards the back entrance, when he appeared at my elbow again. “I’ll walk you back.”

“Why?” I demanded, quickening my pace.

His longer-legged stride easily kept up. “It isn’t safe to be alone.”

“We’re in the safest place in Britain,” I said and laughed. “Besides, I’m the High Lady of Night, remember? The Fae Queen of Starlight and Dreams…and Nightmares. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.” I glanced at him sideways. “I need no man’s protection. I never have.”

His grin was a bright, white beacon through the relative darkness around us as we closed those last few feet to enter the castle. “I recall something different a few weeks ago.”

“I’d have sorted McLaggen without you,” I shot back, becoming irritated now with the fake over-protectiveness. “And really, doesn’t your girlfriend wonder where you are when you’re with me?”

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

He said that so quickly and so angrily, that I _knew_ he was as much a victim of Parkinson as I’d been. We hadn’t discussed his relationship with Slytherin’s Bitch Queen in our secret notes, but I had to admit, I’d been curious for a long while as to why he’d date such a vile woman, as he hadn’t seemed to be a fan of her sort of evil. Now, I thought I understood.

“Does she know about…you know?” I indicated with a pointed look over his shoulder at the massive wings that were tucked against his back. “Is that why you’re with her?”

He nodded but kept his mouth closed until we were down the stairs heading towards the dungeon. “She’s got something on most of us.”

The picture was suddenly clear to me: Parkinson owned Slytherin House not through loyalty and friendship, but through blackmail and intimidation. I wondered if even the ‘gaggle’ was doing what she expected to keep on her good side.

“Why doesn’t someone just stand up to her?”

A gentle touch upon my elbow and I was being directed towards the nearest empty classroom. Behind its door, Malfoy warded us against eavesdroppers and lit the room with a hovering ball of mage-light from the tip of his wand before releasing my arm.

“The Parkinsons come from Hybern, an ancient and powerful seat in wizarding Britain,” he explained, as we crossed the room towards its farthest, shadowed corner to conspire together. “It’s where most of the high players in government have come from over the last several hundred years. Her father is a retired Minister, but he’s still powerful. They call him ‘the King' if that gives you any indication.”

“Alright, so her father’s a big wig. You’re _Slytherin,_ ” I reminded him. “Find a way to knock her down a peg that either takes her father down with her in the scandal or which sets her up for Daddy dearest's massive disappointment. From what I understand, that’s the kind of mischief our House does best, yes?”

In fact, I’d already considered a dozen ways in which to bring Miss Parkinson to her knees, but I had a sneaky suspicion that Dumbledore was keeping a closer eye on me than I was aware. Being asked to leave Hogwarts for an act of petty revenge would effectively end most of my future plans, and that was something I absolutely could not afford, not if I wanted to ever prove my mother wrong and have a future of my own.

_“It’s all a game, Hermione…”_

In this case, at least, I was beginning to understand the sentiment.

“You underestimate her. She can make your life a living hell, Granger, even outside these walls.”

I glanced sideways at him and let him see the determination in my eyes, the things I wasn’t saying, but felt deep in the darker corners of my heart. “Eventually, she’ll get her comeuppance.”

He shook his head. “I can’t afford such optimism. My family is in the same conservative party as the Parkinsons, but we stand to lose everything if she talks about what she knows of my heritage to that obnoxious gossip queen, Rita Skeeter.”

“That was awfully careless of you, showing her your wings, then. Why did you?”

His head hung loosely on his shoulders. “It was an exchange.”

I stepped closer, drawn in by his mysteries. “Your secret for…what?”

His expression grew wary. “Let’s just say that what I did then, and continue to do now, keeps the people I love out of her orbit.”

“Fair enough.” I took another step towards him. “So you’re her boyfriend in exchange for the safety of your friends and family.”

“Yes, and no,” he admitted, his mouth tightening at such an ugly admission. “She doesn’t give a shit about me really. I’m simply her pet whore.”

As if he was humiliated by the truth, he stepped away from me, crossing over to the teacher’s desk, where he perched on its edge, ever mindful of his wings. He’d created space between us, and I knew it was to give me time and distance to better consider him, to walk away if I couldn’t handle his circumstances. He was giving me an ‘out’ from this budding friendship.

His predicament touched upon the part of me that grew indignant on behalf of others in the face of injustice, though. The thought of that awful witch forcing him to sexually perform for her had my hackles rising to levels they’d never stood before. What she was doing was no better than rape, because Draco couldn’t say ‘no’ without severe consequences. She was his ‘master’ and he was no more than a puppet on a string for her.

It was exactly the thing my mother expected me to become someday for some man.

The idea _infuriated_ me. A strange protective and possessive urge overtook me in that moment. It required discipline not to march right back out to the Quidditch pitch that minute and hex the living hell out of Parkinson.

“You know, a Confundus Charm cast on her every day would be a lot easier,” I said in an icy tone. I walked towards him and closed the gap that had opened between us. “Simple to disguise, too. If used enough times, it can even induce permanent memory loss. People have even been known to revert to infantilism from its lasting effects.”

Yes, it was a dark thought, but I was feeling a lot like the High Lady whose crown I’d adopted for the night right then.

Draco’s grey eyes sparkled as brilliantly as my tiara in the white light above us. “Are you trying to get me to do your dirty work for you, love?” He seemed quite favourable of the idea and commending of me for postulating it. “Or just thinking aloud?”

I shrugged. “I’m saying there are no possibilities of accidental pregnancy with my plan.”

He laughed, and it was quite the merry sound. “You are utterly brilliant, aren’t you? A Confundus Charm! I don’t think anyone has ever considered its use in quite the same way as you.” He practically purred at me in approval. “Yes, I do believe you could definitely give Maev a run for her money.” He lifted my hand and kissed the back of it in an old-fashioned, courtly manner and my breath caught in surprise. “My miraculous, burning starlight…”

Abruptly, my mood shifted, my tension eased as I felt the kind of acceptance one rarely finds in this world: that of a kindred soul.

It seemed Malfoy accepted my ‘less civilized’ side, something everyone else in my life had spent years trying to remould to a new purpose or eradicate altogether, finding it uncouth. Not him, though. He seemed to value that part as a vital survival mechanism, not something to fear or loathe. He seemed to enjoy me for the woman I was and did not appear to want to change me into the female society felt I should be.

He made me feel worthy, something that only Crookshanks had ever been able to accomplish prior to tonight.

Regretfully, I withdrew my hand from his, but I could still feel his lips upon my skin. “You mention the Fairy Queen as if you know her personally.” I stared at his wings, where they flared out across the desk behind him to keep them from being squashed. “Are you Fae then?”

He gave me a feral grin. “Come closer and find out.”

Curiosity had me now. It didn’t help his expression was challenging, and I could never pass up a dare that poked at the levels of my bravery. I closed the inches that separated us and stood between his spread legs, meeting his eyes. There was admiration in them for my reckless courage. Slowly he bent a wing forward so I could look at it up close.

“You’re definitely Slytherin, but I’m surprised the Hat didn’t attempt to sort you Gryffindor, too,” he said as I lowered my head to his wing and examined it in the moonlight coming in through the window nearby. “Or Ravenclaw, at the very least.”

“It tried,” I admitted, fascinated by the thin black skin stretched over such delicate bone. “On both counts. I asked for Slytherin.”

He seemed genuinely surprised by that.

“Why?”

I couldn’t help the impish smirk that curled my lips. “Because it was precisely the thing guaranteed to needle my controlling, horribly-conforming mother.”

He laughed again, apparently finding me a gem of comedy…that was until I reached out and stroked over his wing with a feather-light caress.

His whole body jerked and went stiff.

A hiss escaped his lips, the sound of a snake caught off-guard.

I hesitated, but in the end, decided upon testing the theory I’d read that male Veela didn’t like their wings touched as a general rule. Depending upon how Draco reacted this time, it would at least allow me to be able to narrow down options on his breed.

I boldly tickled his wing with the lightest scratching of my fingernails.

As if I’d pushed the button firing up his lust, Malfoy shuddered and a deep, masculine groan escaped his throat. His expression shifted abruptly into one of instant arousal. His shoulders bunched and stretched, emphasizing the Quidditch-honed muscles under his shirt. I glanced down to notice his erection was in full prominence as well and pressing against the front of his leathers. I had to admit, it seemed…impressively sized.

Definitely not Veela.

“Do it again,” he whispered, those grey eyes now glittering with a dark desire. “Touch me.”

I did, running the length of one hard ridge all the way up to his shoulder, before backtracking over the silken, fleshy part to the opposite end. Malfoy’s hands gripped the edge of the desk, the knuckles going white as he tightened his grip. His body trembled and his thighs clamped around my hips, pinning me in place. A sheen of sweat appeared above his top lip and his gaze went glassy with pleasure.

“Can I touch you back?” he asked in a voice raw with sexual hunger.

Mesmerized by the moment, I nodded.

Slowly, as if he was afraid I’d bolt, his hand lifted from the desk to my cheek. His touch was gentle, almost awed as he traced the contours of the bones, followed the path of my jaw, and rubbed his thumb over my lips. I unconsciously licked them, and his focus shifted to the quick darting of my tongue.

“So independent, so fierce… Do you not allow anyone to take care of you?” he asked quietly.

“I haven’t needed anyone to since I was ten.”

It was a fact that no longer bothered me. I’d long ago learned that to let my mother get too close was to allow her to control me, and I refused to be under her dominion, especially as all it would ever lead to was me in a collar, with my chains passed on to some man she approved of in the future. That was why when I was home on breaks, I did the cooking for the family, did my own dishes and my laundry, and I kept my room spotless so there could never be any criticism. I used my grandmother’s inheritance to buy my own clothing. I’d been doing all that since I was ten.

On the plus side, all that self-motivation had only helped me to become academically top of the class, despite Madam Olympe’s disapproval of my excessive desire to achieve. I knew if I could just get through the last year of my schooling here at Hogwarts, I would be set-up for a good Ministry career. As a Muggle-born, I was already going into that with a political disadvantage, but perhaps having ace grades and teacher recommendations from Hogwarts would help me overcome such prejudice. That’s what I’d been banking on, anyway.

…And none of my plans included a torturous teenage romance.

“Thank you for walking me back to the castle and for explaining things to me,” I told him. “I hope you’ll think about what I said, too. Parkinson’s a menace and needs to be stopped. You need to be free of her.” I took his hand in mine. “You’re a good man to protect and care for your loved ones…but I have to wonder, who is protecting and caring for you?”

He seemed astonished by that question, as if, like me, he’d been self-sufficient for so long that it had become a habit.

With that, I left the room and continued back down to the Slytherin dormitories alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines borrowed (some altered) from “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series and altered for this chapter's use: 
> 
> “Hello, Feyre, darling,” he purred.  
> – Rhysand, A Court of Mist and Fury
> 
> “Cruel, beautiful thing.”  
> – Rhysand, A Court of Mist and Fury
> 
> “I found him carefully studying me, his lips in a thin line. “Has anyone ever taken care of you?” he asked quietly.  
> “No.” I’d long since stopped feeling sorry for myself about it.”  
> \- Feyre and Tamlin, A Court of Thorns and Roses
> 
> Hybern is the name of the island whose fairy King is the enemy of Feyre and Rhysand in the novel canon.


	6. Chapter 6

**_~.~.~.~.~_ **

**_Congratulations on your win_** , I wrote after the first big Quidditch match of the season. Slytherin had trounced Ravenclaw. **_You were brilliant. You make flying seem effortless._**

I hadn’t expected a reply tonight, assuming Draco would be busy elsewhere, especially after the look Parkinson had given him in the common room when he’d sauntered in like a hero in Quidditch leathers, but to my delight, letters appeared on the paper a few moments later.

**_Perhaps someday I’ll take you for a real trip into the clouds, sans broom. Would you like that?_ **

**_I’m afraid to fly_** , I admitted. **_Never mastered the art. Like a snake, I prefer to keep my feet on the ground._**

**_Snakes don’t have feet._ **

I giggled. **_You’re impossible._**

**_And you’re improbable. What a pair we make._ **

**_Improbable?_ **

What did that mean?

 ** _One in a million. A girl after my own heart. You’re intelligent, beautiful, ambitious, and look hot in Slytherin green._** A few moments later, he added, **_You’re a dreamer successfully navigating Maev’s Court of Nightmares. Respect._**

I thought, perhaps, he was referring to our previous discussion last week regarding my life goals outside of this place, how I’d planned to someday work at the Ministry and re-write its laws to benefit all people, not just elites. I’d explained to him that I was walking a tightrope in terms of being allowed to stay at Hogwarts to finish my education so I could achieve those long-term goals, and had thus denied the instinct to utterly destroy Parkinson and her croaking toadies.

**_You mean Parkinson’s castle of cruelty._ **

**_Same diff. Still, you’re a shining star in my otherwise bleak existence, Granger. Life is better when you’re around. You are my salvation._ **

My heart did a funny little flip in my chest.

 ** _Charmer_** , I accused.

**_Can’t help it. You’re a pretty female, I’m a horny man._ **

**_Pig._ **

**_We males are horrible creatures, aren’t we?_ **

Yes, most of them were.

 _Some_ of them, I was beginning to realise, were tolerable, however.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines borrowed (some altered) from “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series and altered for this chapter's use: 
> 
> “Males are horrible creatures, aren’t they?”  
> – Amren, A Court of Mist and Fury
> 
> “Life is better when you’re around.”  
> – Rhysand to Feyre, A Court of Mist and Fury
> 
> “I was a dreamer born into the Court of Nightmares.”  
> – Morrigan, A Court of Mist and Fury
> 
>  
> 
> Feyre often refers to Rhysand as 'pig' and 'prick' in the novels whenever he's doing something that deserves the comment.


	7. Chapter 7

**_~.~.~.~.~_ **

Perhaps it hadn’t been the best idea to accept an invitation to the annual Yule Ball from the boy I’d been tutoring since the beginning of November, but no one else had asked and I hadn’t wanted to skip such an event, nor go it alone. It was the final big event of the winter term, and I really just wanted to fit in a bit and not end up as ‘the lonely bookworm’ that Parkinson had labeled me.

Around the same time as I’d started to actually believe that Malfoy’s flirtations might not just be a series of jests, I’d had a startling revelation: I’d been allowing my mother’s ghost to drive me right out of enjoying my teenage years. Logically, I realised, it was quite possible to still attain my life’s ambitions _and_ enjoy myself while doing so. I didn’t have to sacrifice one for the other.

After a conversation on the matter with Draco, where I’d confessed every awkward thing about my relationship with my parents to him, he’d made the comment that if I didn’t want to end up just like my mother—a bitter, old woman desperately trying to relive her dull life through her daughter—then I’d better get on the train before it left the station.

I’d determined him right in this instance, and that was how I’d ended up agreeing to come to the ball as Ronald Weasley’s date.

Gryffindor’s replacement Quidditch Keeper was a nice enough specimen for his gender. He was funny, had pretty hair, was easy-going, and was quite fit. He was also _blunt,_ a quality distinctly lacking in Slytherin house. However, while those were all nice attributes to have, it appeared they were trivial in my mind when measured up against such important traits as attentiveness, intelligence, maturity, and fidelity.

As I stood on the side of the dance floor, watching Ron across the room as he chatted up his housemate, Lavender Brown, it took everything in me to remember not to draw my wand and start casting curses. Finding myself out on the street without my educational degree should I attack fellow students in a fit of rage was probably right out.

Ron said something that made Brown’s eyelashes flutter and her generous mouth part with a flirty laugh. Clearly, _she_ was interested in ruggedly handsome looks over stimulating conversation.

I was beginning to regret having so speedily agreed to Ron’s request to accompany him tonight so as not to appear a lonely cat lady. _“No offense, Crooks,”_ I quickly added in my mind, hoping my familiar hadn’t caught my stray thought.

I felt his grumbling in my head, despite the fact he was currently nestled in a comfy chair in Slytherin’s common room, stationed in front of a window to watch the lake’s fish swimming by. _“That ginger git reminds me of one of my hairballs after a particularly rough night out,”_ he said. “ _Ditch him._ _Go find your friend, Malfoy. He’s worthy of your time, Mistress Mine.”_

I frowned. Draco hadn’t made any overture regarding tonight and us coming together, and I understood why: because Parkinson would expect him to take her. Still, a part of me had been hoping that he’d tell his blackmailer to take a long dive off a short cliff and ask me to accompany him. When he hadn’t, I’d felt a little hurt, I could admit.

And whenever I was hurt, I tended to become snide and defensive… _“You mean the blond git who’d rather show up to an important public function with a blackmailing harlot on his arm than me, the outcast of Slytherin House? That friend?”_

 _“You’re not giving him enough credit,”_ Crooks chided me. _“He’s trying to protect you.”_

 _“I don’t need his protection,”_ I growled back. _“Besides, he’s all wrong for someone like me. He’s superficial, intentionally infuriating_ _-”_

 _“_ _-and gorgeous enough to set your heart racing,”_ Crooks reminded me.

 _“_ _-and much too cunning for my tastes. No, thank you,”_ I primly informed my cat.

I could feel Crooks’ amusement. “ _And here I’d thought you were the type to admire cleverness.”_ I could feel him yawn and stretch as if this conversation had taken up entirely too much time out of his napping period already and needed to be cut short soon. “ _Just as well. As you said, he services the dog-faced witch, and who wants someone so easily commanded by the likes of her?”_

Yes, quite right. Malfoy had that awful woman’s germs crawling all over him, and who wanted to catch a virulent case of Parkinson parasites?

I watched, incensed, as Ron passed off to Miss Brown the drink he’d been sent to fetch for me earlier. He’d given _my_ drink to another woman, one making cow-eyes at him and who clearly had zero respect for my status as his date to tonight’s event.

Circe’s tit, could this night get any worse?

A lovely slow song began to play. Setting their drinks aside, Ron led Lavender out onto the dance floor.

 _“Apparently so,”_ my familiar snarked.

Humiliated, I resigned the entire night to just another prank, and with a resigned sigh, I cast my eyes to the ceiling and prayed for salvation from my horribly awful, terribly doomed first date. Specifically, I prayed for someone to stop me from casting an Unforgivable at Ronald Weasley and Lavender Brown and Pansy Parkinson, and everyone else who had ever made my life hell since I’d come to this school, thus settling the issue here and now that trifling with me came with dire consequences.

_Please anyone, if you’re out there listening, save me from myself!_

Malfoy was suddenly standing next to me and his hand appeared before me, palm open and waiting. “You would not walk out with me before,” he said with an impish smile, “but perhaps you’ll dance with me now?”

Ever since Samhain night, I’d been unable to get him out of my head. What we’d nearly done that night had haunted my waking fantasies ever since. The memory of how he’d reacted under my caresses, of the sounds he’d made as I’d aroused him, of the way he’d explored the curves of my face as if he was tracing a masterpiece had turned my mind to mush. It was as if some barrier I’d resolved to maintain all my life against physical intimacy with a male had simply crumbled under the heat of his gaze and his soft, but possessive touch.

I didn’t like it, didn’t like how thoughts of that night disturbed my studies and shook my concentration, didn’t like how out of control those memories sometimes made me feel when I huddled under my covers at night and practised the art of self-exploration. Most especially, I didn’t like that I was becoming a ninny over a man, whether his name was Ronald Weasley or Draco Malfoy!

Forcibly, I kept my hands at my side and replied, “I’m sitting this one out,” to Draco’s offer to dance.

He came around to my side, dressed once more all in black, this time in dress robes. His wings were hidden, of course, but I knew they were there, just behind his back, concealed in the ether. “May I know why I am being rejected again?” he politely asked. He gave me the once-over. “Surely the beautiful Persephone could spare a moment of her time for us lowly mortals.”

I snorted, but was flattered nonetheless that he’d compare me to one of my favourite mythological figures. “The Goddess of Spring I am not, although I am impressed you at least understand the differences in ancient world fashions.” I pulled the skirt of my dress out to the side and looked at it. “The next person who refers to me as a ‘Roman reject’ gets a firm boot to the head. How anyone could mistake a Greek design for a Roman one... Heathens.” I glanced over at him, noting how handsome he appeared in his formal wear. “Whereas you, well, you’ve got the funerary-pale look down pat and…” I pantomimed a set of flapping wings with my hands. “So if we’re having a mythological look-alike contest, I’d say you’re more like Hades, King of the Underworld.”

He grabbed his chest as if I’d shot him with an arrow. “Surely, you meant Hermes, the handsome and sly winged messenger, my Queen.”

“The trickster, patron god of thieves? Yes, perhaps you’re right. My mistake.”

He chuckled.

“Dance with me,” he persisted.

Firmly, I shook my head. “Even if I was inclined to accept your oh-so-eloquent offer, I do not recall either Homer or Hesiod writing of the dignified Persephone dancing with either Hades or Hermes, who were both bandits in their own ways.”

“Well, if I’m to be accused of improper seizure anyway…”

Before I could slip away, he took my hand and slyly dragged me after him down into the Trophy Room, the anteroom off the back of the Great Hall.

I protested, of course, made a show of not wanting to be manhandled, but the truth was, something deliciously dangerous had ignited within me as his palm had met mine and the thrill of being wanted this much by a boy this sexy was a powerful aphrodisiac that was difficult to continually deny.

We made it to the middle of the room before he took me into his arms.

The music upstairs was only partially muted by the distance, so the romantic song’s lyrics echoed down to us as we began to dance in time to its rhythm.

My cheeks were on fire. “What are you doing?” I asked as he spun me around. “Parkinson-”

“Doesn’t matter right now.”

“She had to have seen.”

He smirked. “Do you think me incapable of blinding her to my whereabouts when I don’t wish to be disturbed?”

My eyes shot to the spot over his shoulder where his wings were hidden. He must have used a similar glamour to hide our escape from upstairs. As none of the teacher-chaperones had followed us down, it only made sense. “Regardless, you’ve left her side, and she came as your date,” I pointed out. “Not that I’m unhappy to see her humiliated, but isn’t that rather disrespectful?”

“Are you trying to paint me the villain in this narrative? I’ve just saved you from an awkward situation.” He leaned his head down so our noses touched. “Do you think Pansy did not see how your date disrespected _you_ up there? Are you so naïve as to believe that she’d let that opportunity pass?” He straightened and frowned down at me, clearly disappointed in my lack of attention to the power plays going on above. “She’d already conned that Creevey fellow into taking pictures of all her enemy’s drama tonight. No doubt he’d noticed, too, and was salivating for that perfect moment to snap the picture of you glaring at Weasley while he spun Brown around on the dance floor.”

It hit me then what he’d really done.

“You left her equally as humiliated by disappearing on her.” The cunning, little snake! “Tell me you timed it just right for when one of her hangers-on was leaving, too?”

His wicked smirk told me that, yes, that was precisely what he’d done. Now everyone would wonder if Draco was stepping out on Pansy with one of her ‘friends’.

“Of course, I plan to reappear later, a little disheveled, perhaps…”

“She’ll punish you, even though it’s not true. Just the suspicion will be enough.”

He spun me around again and the room blurred in a dizzying array of gold and silver light. “I’ll endure with this one good memory to cling to.”

We whirled around and around like fairies in a stone ring under a full moon, Draco weaving a skillful path through the various glass displays and tables laden with a thousand years’ worth of individual and House achievement. Yet, I was oblivious to anything but his sparkling grey eyes, so filled with mischief and a darker mystery that called to me…

“You’re welcome, you know,” he said to me.

“For _what?”_ I asked, knowing I was playing into his hand, but curious as to what he would answer.

“For saving you when asked.”

I frowned at that. How had he known I’d been praying for someone to stay my hand?

He twirled me a final time as the song tapered off into something with a faster beat and we came to a standstill at last.

“May I kiss you?”

His question distracted me from the musings, and caused me to stare at his mouth instead…with more than a little anxiety, to be honest.

I’d never been kissed.

Did I want this? Of course, I did. Should I give in, though? What would be the harm? Should he come down to me, or should I go up on tiptoe to him? Where should my hands go? Would he use his tongue? If so, should I use mine back, and how did one go about doing that anyway without ending up slobbering all over one’s partner? Would I do any of it right? Oh, god, what if I was _terrible_ at it?

Such mad thoughts flew through my head in those few seconds, and I realised when he spoke again that I’d worked myself into a panic.

“Slow, easy,” he whispered to me.

The music upstairs was a million miles away right then, and I could hardly hear it anyway over the pounding of my heart. His arms encircled me completely, pulling me so close I was afraid to breathe.

“Kissing is just another type of dancing.”

Despite the warning inside my skull not to get too entangled with a man, _especially_ the likes of Malfoy, I was nodding my head in silent agreement to the idea of letting him kiss me, trusting him to guide me in this, my first experience.

Draco smiled, and it was gentle and genuine, just like his kiss when he pressed it to my trembling lips.

Warm, soothing. That would be how I’d describe the experience later in my diary. One moment I was stiff and awkward, and the next, I was relaxed and melting into the joy of his kiss.

His lips were velvet soft, stroking over mine with sweet enticement meant to make me yield, and I did, surrendering so easily under his enchantment. Playfully, he licked at the seam of my mouth, coaxing me to open further, and when I gave in, I reveled in the flavour of warm fire and honeyed nectar from the Firewhisky he’d obviously been nipping tonight behind the teacher’s backs. A hungry whimper escaped my throat as the taste drew me in and sunk me deep under his spell.

Erotic pulses of sensation shot through me when I let my tongue dance over and around his, and I felt it then, the power I had over him despite my inexperience. He was hard against me, desperate to have me from just this much…

His fingers worked my chignon loose, freeing my long hair, and he moaned into my mouth as he played with my soft curls. “You’re so sweet, my starlight,” he whispered, nipping at my lower lip with gentle teeth. “Do you know how rare a thing you are?”

I pawed at his shoulders, his tender words only inflaming my need. “More,” I begged and drew him back down to capture his lips once again.

White-hot pleasure shot through me as he claimed my mouth again and again. My body was on fire, reawakened to the obsessive ache that had tormented me for weeks whenever I thought of him, and suddenly it wasn’t just my mouth that demanded a mating. My hips arched of their own accord into his, my back arched, until my hard, sensitive nipples were pressing into his chest. My blood thrummed with a need so demanding I was rocking against him and mewling for satisfaction. Draco’s hands shot to my waist to still me but then slid back to the rounded curves of my rear, lifting me to the hard ridge of his arousal, letting me feel how much he needed me, too.

I wasn’t sure how long we stood there, mouths marrying, tongues arousing, silently promising each other the world for just a few more minutes, but eventually, Malfoy pulled back with a regretful groan. His erection poked hard against my thigh through the layers of our clothing, and I knew he was fighting for control.

I was doing the same.

Everything my mother had been telling me about being mastered by a man was happening to me against my better judgment. I was falling under the spell of Draco’s ownership, into the expressive grey of his eyes and the strength of his arms. I was ready to toss aside my future for him if only he would lay me down on the floor and slide his body into mine. To hell with my plans for a life that was my own…

That realization jolted me as nothing else could.

“I…”

I pulled away.

He held me tighter.

“I’m sorry, I can’t,” I insisted, pushing against him in an attempt to escape his hold.

Draco seemed torn between anchoring me to him and letting me go. Whatever he saw in my face, however, convinced him to release me. He opened his arms and I scurried back several feet, hands held out in front of me to ward him off, in case he changed his mind.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated, shamed to my soul that I’d given in, that I’d led him on, that I’d allowed myself to be seduced by Pansy Parkinson’s boyfriend.

“Granger, wait-”

I turned and ran from the room without a backward glance, only remembering at the top of the stairs to cast a Disillusionment Charm over myself before heading back out into the Great Hall. Slipping between people who were oblivious of my presence, I hurried towards the exit. On the way, I noted Parkinson was arguing fiercely with Colin Creevey, probably about losing me in the crowd earlier. At that moment, I couldn’t care less what bee had buzzed her bonnet. I moved on and headed down the stairs into the dungeon.

My mother’s words haunted me all the way to the Slytherin common room entrance.

_“It’s all a game, Hermione…”_

But it wasn’t in regards to matters of the heart. Not to me. Slytherin I may have been sorted, but I wasn’t ambitious enough to weaponize my feelings to marry rich and let that be my only achievement. I would never become Parkinson or my mother in that way. I had dreams that took me beyond this moment, into a future that was not at all compatible with being enslaved to an unhappy marriage…like what my parents had.

For that reason, I had to keep Malfoy at arm’s length. He was too easy to want more than sex with him, and I couldn’t allow myself to fall in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines borrowed (some altered) from “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series and altered for this chapter's use: 
> 
> “I hadn’t realized I was a villain in your narrative.”  
> – Rhysand, A Court of Wings and Ruin
> 
> “You’re welcome, you know.”  
> “For what?”  
> Rhys paused less than a foot away, sliding his hands into his pockets. The night didn’t seem to ripple from him here-and he appeared, despite his perfection, almost normal. “For saving you when asked.”  
> – Rhysand and Feyre, A Court of Mist and Fury


	8. Chapter 8

**_~.~.~.~.~_ **

It was Saturday, three weeks after the New Year, and a week after the second term began. My new friends were gathered in the Entrance Hall waiting for me to join them. They all looked up when Astoria spied me and called out, waving like mad to get my attention in the sea of students rushing out the doors to catch a carriage down to Hogsmeade for the day.

“Set?” Ginny asked.

“Yes,” Luna distractedly replied, playing with her radish earrings.

“Ditto,” Astoria chimed.

I merely nodded.

We left together and waited for an unoccupied carriage to hop into. With the doors shut, the carriage hustled onward.

“Where to first?” Astoria asked.

Plans were discussed to spend the afternoon shopping, gossiping, and enjoying drinks at The Three Broomsticks. I contributed very little to the conversation, my mind a million miles away. I’d received a nasty note from my mother this morning and it had weighed heavily upon my mind.

Apparently, she’d received a letter from the school board indicating that the second half of my tuition was now due.

_“…you had a comprehensive curriculum in France. Although you were discharged from Beauxbatons, I feel strongly that carrying on your secondary education at that common school in Scotland is entirely unnecessary, especially as the accreditation is non-applicable for real institutions of higher learning, like Oxford or Cambridge. If you wish to continue with this farce, however, the remaining balance will have to come out of the inheritance you received from your grandmother, as I will not be spending my retirement funds on your whimsical goals…”_

As if wanting to work and make a difference in the world was a capricious effort, and standing on your own two feet and building something good that would impact whole communities was folly. As if wanting to be considered an equal to a man and respected for one’s knowledge, rather than for one’s looks, was too outlandish and unreasonable an expectation.

My mother was so far gone down the hole of self-interest and archaic stereotypical gender roles I wasn’t sure she’d ever understood what I was attempting to do.

“’Mione, are you alright?”

I looked up to find Astoria leaning forward in her seat, gazing at me with intense concern.  

Astoria Greengrass was seventeen and a sixth year, the same as Ginny Weasley and Luna Lovegood. She’d been sorted Hufflepuff, and for that reason, her Slytherin family had all but disowned her, but she and I had taken to each other almost immediately after being introduced by Ron last November. That was at the same time as I’d met Gryffindor Ginny and Ravenclaw Luna, and the four of us had become an island of inter-house unity that many others looked at and scorned.

Yet, despite that close bond I felt to the three women around me, I couldn’t share my shame over my mother’s attempts to exterminate my dreams. It felt too poisonous a cloud to spread around, especially on such a lovely day.

Plastering a fake smile on my lips, I nodded. “Sorry, just talking to Crooks.” I tapped the side of my head.

Convinced that my distraction had to do with my rare mental connection with my cat, the others let me be after that. Only Luna watched me as if she knew I was lying. Thankfully, she said nothing, however.

We arrived in the village soon after and set out for shopping first.

At Scrivenshaft’s Astoria waited by the counter, talking to the young female cashier while the rest of us put together our needs. After, we stopped at Sprintwitches so Ginny could get a broom polishing kit. While we were there, we ran into Malfoy, Blaise Zabini, and Theodore Nott. Harry Potter was also there with his best friend, Ron.

Luna wandered over to Harry and struck up a conversation. It was clear by the way Potter looked at my friend that he was, literally, over the moon for her. I was guessing by how close she stood to him that the feelings went both ways.

Meanwhile, Ginny and Zabini were glaring daggers at each other over by the newest broom display. The two had an antagonism that bordered on obscene because everyone within fifty feet could feel their lust for each other masquerading behind the venom in their words.

Malfoy and Nott approached Astoria and me. Both men seemed hesitant.

“Hello, Theo, Draco,” Astoria greeted the men.

Of course, she knew them, as her elder sister, Daphne, was a Slytherin and had undoubtedly introduced the two to her years ago, hoping to set the groundwork for a ‘proper’ match for her ‘improper’ sister.

I nodded at Theo in ‘hello’. He gave us both a bow from the waist in the old custom but didn’t speak. He rarely did. Furthermore, he kept his hands behind his back, as usual, as they were hideously scarred from a fire started by his bullying half-brothers when Theo had been only six-years-old, and he was terribly self-conscious of their effect on others.

“Astoria,” Malfoy acknowledged her with a tip of his head. His attention shifted to me, and I felt the quickening of my breath and blood as our eyes met. “Granger.”

“M-Malfoy.”

It was the best I could manage, given my mouth had gone bone dry and my throat had tightened to the point of embarrassment.

After the Yule Ball, Draco had respected my silent request for distance, including a cessation of our note-passing, and I’d appreciated that kindness. In that moment, however, I was finding it difficult to justify keeping him at arm’s length any longer when all I really wanted to do was ride him to the floor and rip his clothes off, and to hell with the repercussions.

Such thinking was utter madness, and yet it took great restraint not to act upon it.

My obsession with him had heightened over the last few weeks to the point where I’d decided to attempt to quell the raw need in the arms of Seamus Finnigan over the Winter break when we’d both stayed behind at Hogwarts. The Irish hadn’t wanted to go home, and my parents had decided to go on holiday without me, leaving us both with plenty of free time to kill, no Pansy Parkinson to harass us, and little chaperoning from the staff—not that either of us had needed any, as we were both eighteen and of age.

Needless to say, the past few weeks had been ripe with opportunity for two people finding themselves with little to do and few obstacles to preventing them from getting into all manner of mischief. That was how, on Christmas Eve, after consuming a few drams of bootleg Irish whisky in his dormitory room, I’d been in the unique position to proposition Seamus to rid me of my inconvenient virginity. Sex without romantic entanglements I’d determined I could do, and in the doing, I’d prove my mother wrong regarding a woman’s sole worth having anything to do with what was between her legs.

Predictably, being the considerate and horny teenage boy he was, Seamus had been more than willing to take me up on my offer. To be fair, the Irish had been decent and skilled enough I’d enjoyed my first time…and second…and fifth, but the sexual attraction hadn’t been even a tenth of what I’d felt for Draco. That uncomfortable realization was why I’d broken it off with my first lover on New Year’s Day. Fortunately, he’d taken it well and we’d split amicably.

Standing in front of Draco now, though, I felt a frisson of guilt I knew I shouldn’t feel.

Irritated with such misplaced feeling, I reminded myself that he and I weren’t together, nor had we ever been. Snogging did not a lover make, and therefore I hadn’t cheated. Besides, he was with Parkinson by choice, for better or worse, and what they were doing behind closed doors was infinitely more perverted, I was sure. I was simply being ridiculous, acting like some female version of Philip Roth’s Portnoy.

“So, how was your Christmas?” Astoria asked the boys, mostly to be polite, but also to fill the awkward silence that had fallen like a condemnation between us. Theo replied something to the effect of, “As well as can be expected,” which gave Astoria the perfect opening to ask more questions. She chattered on, while I stood stiffly next to her trying not to feel Draco’s gaze burning into my skull.

To my dismay, Theo took Astoria’s hand and directed my friend elsewhere in the shop, leaving me alone with my greatest torment. With just the two of us now, I became acutely aware of just how close Draco stood to me and that the others were far enough away not to overhear any conversation we might have.

“I suppose the fact that you smelled skunk on me the night I’d bathed in Amortentia should have been a sign.”

That wasn’t at all an opening line I could have ever anticipated, and so it surprised me. I glanced up at him to demand he stop teasing me, but when our eyes met, my chest tightened and my vexation simply flittered away.

“I didn’t, really,” I heard myself confessing instead in a low, breathy voice. “I was only-”

“Attempting to keep me at arm’s length that night?”

“Yes.”

Who was I right then that I could be admitting such things aloud? It was as if all my prickly thorns were being shorn away by the earnestness in his gaze.

“Maybe I should have taken the hint then?” he pressed. “Might have saved me from your rejection later.”

I didn’t answer, couldn’t. Either way, I’d be damned.

When he took a single step forward, everything inside me became hyper aware that only inches separated us now.

“Do you think I should have walked away from you when I had the chance?” he asked in a soft, tempting voice. “Would you have wanted me to?”

Inside, my head warred with other parts of me. My body and soul wanted what Draco was silently offering as he stared at me with such tender understanding. At the same time, my head didn’t. If I accepted his terms, it would fundamentally change me, effectively destroying the future I had worked so hard to fashion.

_“It’s all a game, Hermione…”_

I held my arm out and pressed it to his chest to ward him off.

He looked down at where my hand rested, then back at me. “You do that a lot, push me away.” Reaching up slowly, he tucked a stray curl behind my ear. “Do I scare you that much, my Granger?”

“You don’t frighten me,” I automatically denied. A lifetime of conditioning, of protecting my heart from my mother’s hatefulness and my fellow classmate’s resentment had drawn the words from my mouth without thought. “No one does.”

“No?” he asked, searching my face for clues to the truth. When he found it, he nodded. “Good.”

His fingertips traced my jaw, and his thumb softly caressed my chin.

“Do you know that when you look at me as you are now, I feel like I’m dying,” he whispered, closing those inches between us and bending his head so our mouths were even. “All the breath leaves me, and I can’t concentrate on anything but how your lips might taste.” He pulled his attention from my mouth and met my eye again. “It’s the same feeling when you don’t look at me at all, though.”

“Sounds complicated,” I replied, my voice gone husky.

He smiled. “Most things in life are, especially this.”

He leaned down and kissed me. It was soft, quick, over before it had even begun…and it left me dying a little, too. Dying for more.

He pulled away, dropped his hand, and stepped back.

“You’re dangerous for me, too, my starlight. You put me on my knees at a time I can’t afford to fall.”

“I’m sorry,” I told him, for I felt exactly the same way about him.

Before he could reply, from the front of the store, Theo gave a sharp whistle.

As if that was a pre-arranged signal to scatter, Malfoy quickly moved off. From my peripheral vision, I noted Blaise doing the same with Ginny. I turned to see Potter had taken Luna around a tall display that was not easily visible from the door, and that Ron headed over to me, all smiles, asking about tutoring sessions. Ginny joined her brother and stood at his side, a formidable shadow. Theo and Astoria remained where they were, suddenly engrossed in discussing the mannequins sporting new Quidditch jerseys in the shop window.

The front door opened, the tinkling of the bell announcing a customer.

Pansy Parkinson strutted through the door, her ‘friends’ piling in behind her like good flunkies following their mistress’ heels.

The shop suddenly felt too small for so many people.

After taking in the store, Parkinson’s gaze fixated on me. A vicious smirk decorated her ugly face.

“Mister Blewett,” she called out for the shop owner. A plainly-dressed gent with grey hair and spectacles appeared before her in a flash, obviously recognizing her and her powerful name. “I believe my father will be disappointed to learn that this establishment sells its wares to the less desirables of society.” Her gaze never wavered from me, so it was clear to all whom she was referring to. “Such a shame, really, as I know from Papa that you were hoping to expand the store. Your permit might never see the light of day now.”

The cheap-seat hecklers snickered at their leader’s cruelty.

Once upon a time, a few months back, I’d have been shocked by such cruelty, but Parkinson had proved over the term just how twisted she really was, and so the threat didn’t upset me in the way I believe she was hoping. Rather than put the store owner in an uncomfortable, unfair position that could jeopardize his operations or compromise his soul, though, I simply opted to take the higher road and made my way to the door to remove myself from the equation.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Parkinson?” Ron demanded, clearly not one to let such injustice pass. Showing the Gryffindor penchant for bravery, he marched over to the witch and got in her face. I’ll admit, I thought better of him for standing up to her, even knowing the consequences. It wiped clean all his past sins in an instant, as far as I was concerned. “Are you really that ugly inside, too?”

Potter was at his friend’s side in an instant, putting a hand on Weasley’s shoulder to calm him. His green gaze was hard and disapproving, however, when he looked at Pansy. He wasn’t stupid enough to provoke her, but he made no bones about the fact that he’d squash her in a moment if he could.

Unfazed, Parkinson simply smiled back. She clearly had something on him, too.

“Come on, Hermione, let’s go,” Astoria said, bravely taking my arm and leading me to the door. Behind me, Ginny and Luna followed, similarly offended on my behalf. Their loyalty to me brought tears to my eyes.

Pansy, though, wouldn’t be outdone for the last word.

“You might want to be careful of unfortunate associations, Astoria. They do have a way of coming back on you in most…unpleasant ways.”

Malfoy was at Parkinson’s side in an instant. “Pans, enough. You’ve made your point.”

“It’s enough when I say it is, lover,” she venomously replied, twining her arm through his and giving him a smouldering, hungry look. “Speaking of such, I’m suddenly in the mood for a little privacy. Perhaps Madam Puddifoot could be convinced to rent out her back suite to us again…”

I didn’t stay for the rest, hurrying away.

When we were outside and the door shut behind us, I let Astoria lead me down the street and counted to fifty to restrain my furious impulse to whip out my wand and unleash some serious destruction. Over and over in my head, I reminded myself that I couldn’t afford any negative attention, especially if it would get me expelled. I only had to tolerate the bitch’s sniping and sadism for six more months, and then I’d be done with her forever and have the credentials needed to pursue a career in the M.L.E. I couldn’t allow Parkinson’s harmless jabs to get under my skin. I had to focus on the bigger picture.

“Someone needs to knock that cunt on her arse,” Ginny snarled.

“Don’t worry, someone will,” Luna stated quite calmly, looking right at me. She fingered her wand, which I noted had the words “TRUTH TELLER” etched down its side, but then quickly holstered it and held her hands up in the air. “Snowing!”

Icy fractals fell all around us as the sky suddenly opened up and snow began to fall.

“Come on, let’s go convince Rosmerta to serve us some spiked nog,” Astoria encouraged, and the four of us trooped off to The Three Broomsticks to get warm and temporarily forget the coldness of the outside world.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines borrowed (some altered) from “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series and altered for this chapter's use: 
> 
> “I’m thinking,” he said, following the flick of my tongue over my bottom lip, “that I look at you and feel like I’m dying. Like I can’t breathe.”   
> – Rhysand, A Court of Mist and Fury
> 
> Truth Teller is the name of a blade Azriel gave to Elain Archeron. She used it to slay a magical fairy king in the novel series. It's true power, however, is unknown to the reader.


	9. Chapter 9

**_~.~.~.~.~_ **

**_You’re missing so much comedy by not taking Divination._ **

I was tempted not to answer, to leave the piece of parchment where I’d set it aside after the Yule Ball. Parkinson had been upping the ante since our run-in at Scrivenshaft’s two weeks ago, and I realised that the warning Draco had given me long ago about the witch’s vindictiveness had been correct. There was something mentally unhinged in the woman, and it seemed to be increasing in its capacity for cruelty, for a reason I couldn’t fathom.

I watched the words erase, to be replaced by others.

**_Trelawney predicted Pansy would fall from a tower today, and she nearly shed all her hair._ **

Huddled behind closed and warded curtains on my bed with a ball of mage-light bobbing behind me, I read his comment and chuckled.

Should I reply? It had been so long since we’d last talked, and I’d missed him and his snarky, silly teasing. I’d missed his support and his good advice. I’d missed how he could read something I’d written and see between its words into its very heart, knowing what I’d really meant.

**_I miss you._ **

His words, a mirror of my own sentiment, forced me to recognise that what he and I had discovered in each other was rare. There was a bond between us, one begun through mutual dislike of a common enemy and grown over time into respect and a deep caring for the other. He was my ally, my confidant…my true friend.

 _“He’s your soul mate,”_ Crooks said, his tail lazily wagging and tickling my foot.

“How do you know?” I asked aloud, looking down the length of my body to where he sat at the end of my bed.

My familiar merely looked at me through mysterious green eyes. He licked his mouth and twitched his whiskers.

“Ooh, you males are all the same,” I growled. “Go on, then, keep your secrets.”

_“He’s waiting for a reply, I believe.”_

I turned back to the parchment, staring at the quickly disappearing letters for a moment longer, and then I reached for my quill and ink.

 ** _I’ve missed you, too,_** I wrote and let it stand there for a good minute, before continuing. **_Tell me about Parkinson’s meltdown. What did Trelawney do?_**

 

* * *

 

I hated Valentine’s Day.

It was the one day of the year that tended to turn level-headed, serene people into screeching beasts—especially if they were disappointed…or thoroughly pleased. Perhaps a bit of both, depending upon the experience.

The point was I found it a detestable holiday.

“You wouldn’t think so if the right person was to push your buttons today,” Astoria teased me as I grumbled my thoughts aloud.

“Rubbish,” I countered and turned the page to the Political Op-Ed section of _The Daily Prophet_ to read up on the Ministry’s newest scandals. Honestly, the officials in Britain were far more corrupt than those in France, I was discovering, and that was saying a lot. “Plenty of people bedevil me on a regular basis, but you don’t see me turning into a rabid animal over it, do you?”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it. And you’re talking about Malfoy.” Astoria intentionally flipped the page on my newspaper to the Pink Column instead. Little pink and red hearts bubbled up from it and floated through the air around us. I waved them away in annoyance. “For the record, I think you do plenty of foaming at the mouth whenever he’s _prodding_ at you.”

I glared at her double entendre. “That prick could infuriate a nun.”

Alright, yes, I was angry at him. For a man who’d once claimed he couldn’t breathe when he looked at me, he’d been doing an awful lot of _not_ looking at me at all on the lead-up to Valentine’s. Or talking to me; the parchment had remained blank for the last three days. My friends had all sent me girlfriend Valentines today. Even Ron had passed me a small bag of chocolates, thanking me for helping him in his studies.

Yet, here it was dinner, and Malfoy had remained silent and invisible for the entire day.

Parkinson had been missing, too, I’d noticed.

“Mmm,” my friend agreed with my assessment, looking entirely too much like my cat at the moment, specifically when he was attempting to play coy. “Malfoy’s certainly made for sinning, isn’t he?”

I snapped the paper closed, my temper riled. “And what do you know of it?”

My girlfriend looked at me as if I’d lost my ever-loving mind. Maybe I had. After all, I despised one of the most harmless holidays on the calendar, one that encouraged the consumption of large quantities of chocolate. How rational was that?

Perhaps, though, my dislike went a lot deeper. Perhaps I was disgusted by this school, with its silly logo about sleeping dragons and its teachers who happily promoted an annual event that tore people’s hearts from their chests and turned them into howling monsters. Perhaps I hated that, as I looked around, I saw that too many people seemed to have the same attitude about relationships as my mother espoused: that a woman was for sale to the man who presented the most impressive and expensive token to win her attention.

Perhaps I simply detested the fact that love was a shade of Gryffindor red and that it was the colour of jealousy that belonged to Slytherin.

“Sorry. I’m out of sorts,” I told Astoria, attempting to cover for my fickle mood and apologise. She seemed to understand in that way good girlfriends do and easily forgave me my rudeness with a simple nod. “I think I’ll head to the library to finish an assignment. At least I’ll accomplish one productive thing today, aside from brooding. See you later?”

My friend wished me luck and waved me off…and swiped my abandoned newspaper from where it sat on the table, immediately turning back to the pages with the latest gossip outside the school.

Gathering my things, I left the Great Hall and headed up to the fourth floor.

Halfway down the corridor from Madam Pince’s domain, I spied a familiar head of platinum hair in a shadowy niche and stopped on a Knut. Malfoy was tucked away in secret conspiracy with Parkinson, who was hanging all over him. She cooed to him like a vulture seeking scraps from a recent kill.

“Darling, you know I enjoy how savage you are in bed, but if you keep tearing my knickers off like you did twice today, I’ll have no lovely underthings to wear.”

“I doubt any of your other paramours will care,” he dryly replied, sounding as if he wanted to be elsewhere at the moment.

“Mmm, probably true,” she conceded, ignoring her partner’s disinterest, too narcissistic to care. “Still, I’d like you to be a little less amorous in your pleasuring of me from now on. As it is, I’ll have to ask Gregory to buy me another six sets from that little Parisian lingerie shop I so adore, which will set him back quite a bit. The poor boy won’t be able to afford my graduation dress robes at this rate, and then whatever will I do?”

He growled and pointed a finger in her face. “I could care less about your underwear, and you can stop sniffing around for me to volunteer to pick up your clothing tab, too. The only thing you’ll be getting from me is a good, hard fuck every now and then. That was our bargain.”

Her smile was cruel, and her eyes filled with black malice as they alighted on me behind him. “Then do me again, right here. Fuck me. Now.”

My reaction was uncontrollable and unfortunately, played right into her hands: I hissed like an incensed viper at her.

She _knew_.

The wicked witch had somehow found out how I felt about Draco, even as such feelings were against my will and better judgment. She was provoking me.

Having heard the sound, Draco’s head snapped around and he froze when he spied me standing there several feet away, panic and guilt crisscrossing his features.

Pansy twined her arms around his neck, draping her body triumphantly over her conquered prey. “I gave you an order, lover. Fuck me. Right here…or else I might decide to discuss Nott’s _real_ mother—the lady of Nott Manor’s chambermaid, wasn’t she?—with Rita at lunch tomorrow.”

_Oh, my god._

What. A. Bitch.

Clenching my hands into tight fists, I winced at the burn as my nails cut through the delicate skin of my palms. She wouldn’t really‒

Her tone grew hard, grating when she demanded of her puppet, “Well?”

She would, the unbelievable cunt.

“Draco?” I called to him, hoping he’d hear in my voice my desperation for him to walk away from this madness, to come to me and not let such a horrible woman own him any longer. “Please.”

Parkinson snarled at him when it seemed as if he might give in to my plea. “I’ll have Nott’s two half-brothers pay him another visit, and they’ll take more than his hands this time. He’ll never recover, Draco. I promise you that.”

That threat seemed to be enough to seal the deal.

Draco shut his eyes and turned back to the woman in his arms, hiding his face from me in shame. He slammed Parkinson into the wall nearby, and I could hear the clink of his belt buckle coming undone. “Beat it, Granger,” he growled. “We don’t need an audience.”

“Let her stay and watch, if she wants,” Pansy antagonized us both, practically purring now in excitement. “It’s probably all she’ll ever get of you anyway, lover.”

“No,” I whimpered, taking a step forward, reaching for him. “Don’t!”

My wand was suddenly in my hand, but I hesitated to use it. I could be expelled, my future would end before it had even begun.

_“It’s all a game, Hermione…”_

_“Shut up!”_ I shouted at my mother’s voice haunting my brain. _“Shut up, shut up!”_

This wasn’t a game, not to me.

“I said get out of here, Granger!” Draco snarled and I heard his zip come down and the rustling of clothing that was shifted to give better access.

It hit me hard then that he wasn’t going to stop this. He was going to do as Parkinson wanted because he was her whore, and this was the price of her silence.

“No, Draco, please stop!” I cried out, stricken. My mind grabbed for and discarded a dozen spells in seconds, as they became mixed up in my head. I couldn’t remember the correct hand movements or the proper words to cast, as everything inside me was too busy screaming in horror to concentrate. “Please don’t do this!”

“Leave!” he demanded.

The cloth of Parkinson’s knickers being ripped from her body was a violent, tearing sound that I swore I’d hear until the end of my days.

 _“Come back to your room, my Mistress,”_ Crooks appealed to me, and I knew he’d felt my heart breaking across the distance and was trying to help in the only way he could. _“I’ll tell you all the secrets you ever wanted to know about cats if you do.”_

I reached out again. “Draco‒”

He grunted when he thrust into Parkinson’s body, and something inside me…just…broke.

I shattered into a million pieces right there in the fourth-floor corridor. The Hermione Granger that was before this moment was abruptly no more. She’d died as assuredly as if she’d had every bone broken and her neck snapped.

Parkinson saw it, she laughed.

I don’t remember much after that.

Somehow, I’d ended up back downstairs, Astoria found me first. Only when she’d asked me if I needed a healer did the shock allow a bit of emotion to peek through. I’d ended up crying in her arms. I’d been hurt so many times in my life: by my mother’s disdain and my father’s cowardice, by the mocking of my classmates and the betrayal of Madam Olympe, by the death of extended family and the upheaval of my dreams. You’d think I’d be inured to the feeling by now, immune to it even.

The truth was I knew nothing of real pain until that moment.

Draco had been right: this did feel like dying.

Crooks comforted me that night by staying at my side and snuggling up with me. His soft fur and gentle purring eventually brought an end to my tears and lulled me into a deep sleep.

My last thought before I drifted off, however, was that I’d always hated Valentine’s Day…and now nothing was ever going to change that fact.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In ACOTAR, Amarantha kills Feyre by breaking every bone in her body and snapping her neck.


	10. Chapter 10

**~.~.~.~.~**

Blaise Zabini sidled up next to me as I stood on the covered bridge and looked out over winter-clad Scotland.

The end of February was really no different from the beginning of it up here in the Highlands: the air froze in your mouth, the ground glinted like diamonds, and the natural world was mostly silent as it hibernated and huddled to retain warmth.

I tightened my green and grey scarf around my neck. “It’s colder here than in France,” I said, breaking the silent stalemate between myself and my hovering companion. “The Pyrenees has a near perpetual claim to snow on the ground, and yet there’s more bite to a Scottish winter.”

“The Pyrenees gets sun,” Zabini replied, casting an eye towards the grey, overcast sky above. “We don’t.”

“Mmm,” I agreed.

I knew Draco had sent his friend to me, just as he’d sent Nott the week before. He was trying to offer me comfort in the only way he could…and in the only way I would allow.

Oh, he and I talked, but only through the parchment. Parkinson had made it all-but impossible for us to ever be alone, constantly clinging to Draco in public. However, our conversations had been stilted, filled with a lot of emotional dancing. By mutual, silent agreement, we didn’t speak of Valentine’s night or of any night thereafter he spent in Parkinson’s arms. There was a…space…between us now, filled with truths neither of us wanted to face, much less address.

So, he sent his friends to be with me during the day, and at night, we occasionally talked, when Parkinson wasn’t visiting his bed.

“I want this year to be over,” I whispered into the still air. “I want school to hurry up and fly by so I can be done with this horrid place and these awful feelings.” I hastily wiped away the tear that had dared trail down my cheek. No more crying, I vowed. I’d done enough the last two weeks to fill a first-year’s cauldron. “I want to move on.”

Zabini said something then that shocked me to my bones.

“He won’t ever let you go. He’ll follow you to the ends of the earth.”

I slammed my fist down on the railing. “Why can’t he just leave me be? I have things I want to do with my life, and they don’t include being tangled up with a man!”

My companion’s lips pulled into a tight line. “You know why not. You feel it, too. Inside, there’s a…thread of fire…that connects you to him. It ignites whenever you’re near, whenever you _think_ of him. It’s a need to know he’s safe, to know his thoughts, to touch them. An obsession that burns, but never dulls. A scent that lingers and torments you. A second heartbeat that never fades from your chest. Your plans don’t factor into it. It _is_ , whether you want it to be or not.”

His expression had turned to inner thoughts, and I suddenly understood what he wasn’t saying. “That’s how you feel for Ginny.”

He just grunted.

It was how I felt for Draco, too.

“He will love you all his life, Hermione, even if you never forgive him.”

I heard: _he will never move on from you._

I feared it was the same for me.

We stood there for the longest time, both lost in our heads, before I’d turned and headed back for the castle. Zabini fell into silent companionship beside me.

For the rest of that week, he stuck by my side during daylight hours, whenever possible. I didn’t mind as he proved to be a good deterrent to Parkinson’s psycho circus and its wicked attacks. Of course, it helped his cause to be so good to me, at least in Ginny’s eyes, but I didn’t hold that secondary agenda against him. He _was_ my brother in Slytherin, after all.

The following week, it was Nott and Zabini, together playing sentinel.

My girlfriends and Crookshanks, too, were there for me during this difficult time, supportive and kind.

In between, I continued to tutor Ron Weasley, and was fast becoming friends again with him and with his friend, Harry Potter. They were, to my surprise, quite a disarming and fun duo.

Sometimes, at night, Draco and I would speak through the parchment, usually about how our days went, how our N.E.W.T. studies were going. Nothing more personal, though. It was as if we’d gone back to the early days of our acquaintance, when I’d been wary of sharing and he’d been careful not to push.

I’d never felt so alone.


	11. Chapter 11

**~.~.~.~.~**

The view was beautiful from the Astronomy Tower, affectionately called the House of Wind to the students as the wind tended to buffet the North tower something fierce. From this high off the ground, the whole of the Forbidden Forest could be seen, stretching for miles down the length of the loch. Snow still lightly dusted the tops of the evergreens dotting the landscape, but the struggling sun had finally peeked a bit through the cloud cover to cast its pale light upon the Black Lake down below, creating a shimmering surface of black glass.

As long as I didn’t look over the railing and kept my eyes on the horizon, my Acrophobia was kept in check and it became easier to imagine that I was floating among the clouds, rather than mounted on a broom that hovered three feet in the air.

“You have to hold tighter to the handle,” Ginny told me, and I could hear in her voice her mounting frustration. She wasn’t a very good teacher, honestly, as she lacked patience, but she had been willing to take time out of her weekend to help me learn how to fly and for that I was grateful, so I decided not to take any criticism from her personally. “Grip the broom and just command it to obey. You’re the one with the magic here.”

From the sidelines where he’d been standing and observing for the better part of twenty minutes, Nott finally stepped in. “Forcing the stick might work for you, but it’s not the best advice for a new trainee.” He came over to us and steadied me where I sat on the hovering broom. He stretched his hand over my arm and then pulled back. “Think of a broom like a wand. It can sense your moods, almost anticipate your intentions. As soon as you touch, it becomes attuned to you.”

No one had ever explained a broom to me in such a manner before, and suddenly it all started to come together for me. This was just another type of magic, one that put me in the air, rather than left me on the ground.

“You’re too stiff, and the broom senses it,” he told me. “It’s as nervous as you are. That’s the reason it’s quivering. Do you feel it?”

I did. The handle under me felt as jittery as my nerves.

“Unlock your elbows,” he advised. “Lean forward.”

Following his direction, I was soon able to fly the broom easily around the circumference of the tower on the inside. Astoria cheered me on as I did a circle and dodged under one arm of a giant telescope and around a scaffold set-up to paint the walls of the tower. Ginny looked on, nodding in approval as I tamed a broom at long last.

As I landed back where I’d started after several laps around the room, I was feeling lighter than I had in weeks. Astoria hugged me and Ginny slapped me on the back. Blaise did likewise, and Theo simply bowed his head to me in admiration for a job well done.

“Next you’ll be performing the Wronski feint.”

The merriment in the room seemed to fade as Malfoy came up the final step and joined us.

A moment later, the group just sort of unanimously broke up, rats fleeing the sinking ship.

“Come, Red, let’s go see if you have what it takes to beat my time around the pitch,” Zabini said, taking Ginny’s hand in his. “I’m betting you won’t, but…miracles might happen for you today.”

“You fly like a pig wearing a sack of potatoes, Zabini,” Ginny countered, but I noticed she didn’t pull her hand from Blaise’s hold and she let him lead her away. “The slowest cow in the herd could pass you up.”

They argued all the way down the stairs.

Theo and Astoria headed off behind the other couple. Astoria was talking poor Nott’s ear off about getting everyone together to go drinking tonight in the village. She had some mad idea about setting up a Muggle disco down there someday, now that I’d explained what one was to her, so everyone could go dancing, too.

Their abrupt departure conveniently left Draco and me in a room that required a person to climb twelve flights of stairs to reach. With night approaching fast outside, now that the sun was going down, that meant we would effectively be alone. Filch never came up here, and neither did any of the ghosts or staff. It’s why I’d chosen this spot to learn how to fly.

“How’d you know we’d be up here?” I asked, curious as to how he’d tracked me down.

His wings appeared behind him as he released the glamour that held them hidden. Stretching them to their full width, he sighed in relief, and I realised that every day he had to cram them in tight and hide them in a pocket dimension that followed him around so no one would ever see them or brush against them. That had to be a painful and exhausting effort, as they were as wide as he was tall.

“I’ll always be able to find you,” he told me.

I knew why from the things Zabini had confirmed for me weeks ago, but as I got off the broom and set it aside, I decided to play dumb. “Let me guess: my scent?”

He folded his wings back, tucking them in once more. They remained visible, however.

“Well, it’s not as strong as skunk, but it’s definitely unforgettable,” he teased.

I plucked and brushed at my clothing to get the dust off my jeans. I’d fallen twice off the broom before Nott had stepped in to give me pointers.

That odd, hollow feeling that had been following me around for the last month only grew stronger in Draco’s presence, I noticed. I was haunted by the despair of having tasted defeat, by a kind of phantom limb syndrome where my heart used to be. For all my friends’ efforts to cheer me, I still felt exhausted and a little broken most days.

“What do you want?” I asked, tired of the games.

“Your forgiveness.”

He said it so earnestly that I couldn’t help but search out his face for any hint that he might not have been genuine. He was Slytherin, after all, and we weren’t known for our honesty. That was more Hufflepuff’s style.

When I found nothing but sincerity, I shrugged. “There’s nothing to forgive. You did what was required of you.”

He frowned. “Meaning?”

I sighed. “Meaning you are owned, Draco. Your mistress demands, so you obey.” I waved my hand to encompass the whole castle. “The lot of you are good, little minions.”

He came towards me, upset. “And what would you have me do? A Confundus Charm to shut her mouth? A Tongue-Tying hex? And what happens when those wear off? I can’t cast them forever.” He shook his head. “She knows too much, Hermione. She knows _everything._ ”

“What does she know?” I demanded. I put my hands on my hips and challenged him, as he’d always challenged me before. Something within me had reignited in the face of his resignation, and I could feel that familiar fire start to burn to life once more. My own submission I could accept, but his…something within refused to accept that this magnificent male should ever surrender to someone as wretched as Pansy Parkinson. “What does she have on you?” I nodded at his wings. “Who are you, really, Draco Malfoy?”

He sighed, shoving a frustrated hand through his short, blond hair and ruffling it. “At least you didn’t say, ‘what’, but ‘who’. That, at least, gives me some hope that you don’t consider me some half-breed monster.”

I scoffed. “Do you see me as such simply because my parents are Muggles?”

“No.”

“Do you think me somehow less than you because I’m female?”

“No.”

“Exactly.”

He stared at me for the longest time, hope reappearing in his eyes. His throat bobbed a few times as he fought to control his emotional response to my acceptance. “Sit?” he finally asked, and with a wave of his wand, two chairs scooted across the room to face each other. He took one and waited for me to do likewise.

I sat across from him while he situated his wings so the chair didn’t kink or I injure them…and just like that, I had an itch to touch them again, to caress along that soft, taut skin and watch him come undone for me once more.

“Tell me everything,” I insisted, squeezing my knees to keep my hands still.

So he did, and I listened with my heart and not just my ears.

“You were right when you said I spoke of the Dark Queen, Maev, as if I knew her. She’s quite literally my mother, but she goes by the name Narcissa Black-Malfoy here,” he admitted with a rueful smile. “My father is a wizard, one-hundred percent human, so I’m half-Fae.”

Well, that definitely floored me. “Your mother is Queen of the Unseelie Court?”

He nodded. “Well, she _was.”_

“Does Parkinson know?”

“No, but she does know I'm half-Fae.”

“Does anyone know about your mother?”

“My father and me, obviously. And now you. No one else, though.”

“How is that even possible?”

He rubbed his palms over his thighs, presumably to wipe the nervous sweat from them. “My mother met my father under a blue moon in the Forbidden Forest when he’d gone out to collect apothecary plants for his seventh-year Potions class. He’d stepped into a mushroom circle by mistake, and she’d gone to investigate, bored with life at her court. The moment she’d looked upon him she’d known he was the destined mate of her heart. Their bond just snapped into place in that instant. But he was a human, and she knew he’d be eaten alive by the other dark Fae if she took him to her court to live. What they do to the innocent there makes Parkinson look like an amateur.”

“So she found a way to live here with him instead,” I said, guessing that much. “How?”

“She abdicated, leaving her crown to her sister, Bellatrix. Then, she left the Unseelie Court forever. She could never go back once the decision was made, but she still had her magic, fortunately. As glamours and Memory Charms are the Fae’s strongest magics to wield, it was a simple thing for her to alter human reality to create a fake background: she was a human witch, a member of the infamous Black family, who were both politically powerful in the human realm and prolific at the time, her parents had died tragically when she’d been a child, her two sisters lived in France, where they’d all gone to school. A spell here and there, and suddenly people would remember having met her before. Eventually, she was just accepted. Her cover made it easy for my father to marry her, too, as the Blacks were well-to-do pure-bloods. In addition, she had a fairy’s fortune in gold and gems to bring to the marriage. They wed, and nine months later, I was born in the same bed where I was conceived. They’ve been together every day since.”

My jaw became unhinged. “You mean to tell me your mum gave up all that power and her immortality for a _man?_ And she’s happy with that decision?”

“You sound surprised,” he said with a laugh. “It _is_ possible you know.”

“What is?”

“To have a happy marriage.”

“No, it’s not.”

My automatic denial had come so fast that even my head had spun as I’d said the words. Draco just looked at me as if my belief astonished him.

I stared at my hands, embarrassed by my vehement denial of an institution that I’d been born and raised to believe was as mandatory for society as shoes. “I mean…there’s always a power dynamic between two people, a hierarchy. It’s human nature. And the person on the bottom of that ladder, their voice and thoughts become insignificant over time. They submit to the mastery of the other until finally who and what they are disappears entirely under the mountain that is the dominant partner. That’s always how it goes.”

He was silent, contemplating that for a bit before replying, “You mean that’s how your parent’s relationship goes.”

I shrugged. “Parkinson proves it, too, if you think about it.”

Draco’s hand suddenly covered one of mine and I glanced up at the shock of our touching again. The warmth of his skin was a spark to that small flame deep inside my soul, just as Zabini had described it. “That’s how damaged people are,” he told me, “but when you find your heart’s mate, they complete you in ways that make you equal to each other. Like puzzle pieces coming together to make a whole picture.”

I stared at him through a curtain of tears and trembled. “And are we equals like that, you and me?”

“Yes, we’re the same, you and I. Not in flesh, but in the thing that prowls beneath our skin and bones. We’re the serpent and the cat, Unseelie and shadow...we are the sly and clever creatures of night who reach for the light, who dream of it.” He was up and off the chair, on his knees before me, taking my hands in his. His eyes were exactly even with mine, due to the height differences. “I’ve known since the first moment I laid eyes on you who you were to me. My soul cried out for you as the bond snapped into place for me. I fought it, though. I was afraid and resentful of the power I knew you’d have over me if I let you. I didn’t want another female like that in my life. I’d been Parkinson’s whore for too long by then and the idea of being brought to my knees by another witch...”

My heart stopped.

He understood.

From the other side of the curtain, he’d felt the exact same fears I had…only his had been real and realised. He’d actually been shackled and collared, chained to another person against his will. He’d felt the injustice and the indignation of being mastered, of having to play the game to get ahead, of servitude.

He’d lived my greatest terror for years.

“I don’t mind being here now, though.” He indicated where he knelt at my feet. “Because I see you for who you are, what you want, and I know it isn’t my subjugation. I know what you desire, what you wish, the challenges you will face, and I see the courage within you, the steely determination, the prickly will to make it all happen. I find it all beautiful, my Granger. Every facet of you is beautiful to me, and I love you, Hermione, thorns and all.” He lifted my hands and kissed my fingertips one at a time. “You are my starlight…my dream.”

I took my hands from his, cupped his cheeks, looked into those stunning grey eyes and I felt the emptiness inside me filled up with so much love, I swore I was glowing with it. Here, before me, knelt my friend, the man who had healed my broken and weary soul, the man who had waited for me against all hope, despite all odds to see the truth of our connection.

We were soul mates.

I climbed out of the chair and fell to my knees before him, humbled by the revelation.

“I believe everything that’s happened unfolded exactly the way it had to, so I could find my way to this moment with you,” I told him and touched him as he once had touched me, learning the curves of his face with my fingers, tracing them with light and hope shining in my heart. “I see you too, Draco, and in all the same ways. My clever fairy-serpent.” I let my hands explore his shoulders, reach for his wings. “The night doesn’t frighten me anymore, especially with you at my side to walk with me through it,” I said while stroking over the sensitive black flesh. He trembled against me, groaned, and stretched his wings wide to give me greater access. I took full advantage, feeling him grow hard against my belly as I leaned into him. “And I don’t mind dancing into or out of the shadows, as long as you’re there to hold onto me when the music stops.” I glanced into his eyes and fell in love all over again. “Will you be with me like that?”

“For as long as you want,” he promised.

“Forever,” I demanded, gripping his shoulders again, digging my nails in.

He chuckled, and it was a wicked, low sound that vibrated through me with delicious intent. Then, he lowered his head and kissed me, stealing my breath and sealing our fates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines borrowed (some altered) from “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series and altered for this chapter's use: 
> 
> “I was a dreamer born into the Court of Nightmares.”  
> – Morrigan, A Court of Mist and Fury
> 
> “I love you,’ he whispered, and kissed my brow. ‘Thorns and all.”  
> – Tamlin, A Court of Thorns and Roses
> 
> "I believe that everything happened, exactly the way it had to... so I could find you."  
> – Rhysand, A Court of Wings and Ruin
> 
> “We are the same, you and I,” Amren said.  
> I wasn’t sure I was breathing. Through the bond, I wasn’t sure Rhys was, either.  
> “Not in flesh, not in the thing that prowls beneath our skin and bones…”  
> – Feyre & Amren, A Court of Wings and Ruin
> 
> In the ACOTAR series, Rhysand's palace is called the House of Wind, and it's high up on the side of a mountain.
> 
> In "A Court of Wings and Ruin", Azriel taught Feyre how to fly.


	12. Chapter 12

**~.~.~.~.~**

It was explosive, dangerous heat that rose up inside me. The desire to possess and be possessed, the overwhelming sensation of vulnerability and awakened feminine sensuality washed through me, a clash that had me pulling him over me as I lay back onto the floor.

My head tipped to the side as he ran his lips and tongue over my throat. I felt the scrape of his teeth along my thudding pulse and moaned. “More, please,” I begged, “Don’t stop this time.”

“You’re sure?” he whispered into my ear.

I nodded. “I need you inside me.”

He groaned and shifted, reaching for the hem of my jumper. Pulling it up, he had it over my head and cleared in a moment, forming a soft pillow of it for my head. My jeans were next, unbuttoned and slowly yanked down my legs. My shoes and socks went with them.

He took a second to look me over and smiled as his eyes paused halfway down my body.

“Pink?”

My cheeks went bonfire hot. “I happen to like the colour.”

He glanced up at me, and there was wickedness dancing in his eyes. “It looks fetching on you, but I think it would look better off.”

I raised my hips a few inches off the ground. “Then get to it.”

“Bossy,” he snickered and reach for them. As he began to slide them down, he paused, however. “Have you-?”

I nodded. “I know what to do.”

“Is it terribly misogynistic to say I wish it had been me?”

I looked him in the eye. “Me, too?”

Bending down, he kissed my belly button. “Doesn’t matter. You’ll be my last.”

I cupped his cheeks and forced him to look at me again. “Do you swear it?”

Slowly, he rose so our faces were level. “I swear it on my dreams, on the very stars.”

My lips curled into a smile. “You say the most romantic things for a Dark Fae.”

“Half,” he corrected me and then kissed me again.

Flames licked my flesh as his fingers and mouth danced with skill across every inch of me. He slipped my bra off my shoulders and my panties from my legs, and he kissed every revelation. His fingers and tongue explored the taut ripeness of my nipples and the slick, soft folds of flesh between my thighs. Sensation raged through me as he teased and tortured, and I fought for breath as he finally brought me to the edge and caught me as I tumbled over it.

And then I turned the tables, demanding equality, and he let me undress him and do as I willed. My parted lips sampled every inch of his tight, smoothly muscled body, licking and sucking hot, satiny flesh. I enjoyed him as he had me, sliding my mouth around him, cupping him in my hand and stroking, bringing him to the brink.

Before I could taste his passion, he had me on my back again, nestled among the pile of our clothing, and his mouth had reclaimed mine.

Between my thighs, he lay hard and ready. He slid that solid length through my swollen, wet flesh and then notched himself at my entrance. I gripped his arms, dug my nails in, raised my hips, and brought him into me a slow inch at a time.

It was pure torture, devastating ecstasy as I looked down to watch the broad flesh disappearing inside me. His hips rolled and he sunk deep, to the very hilt, taking my breath with a last, little thrust.

“Fuck,” he hissed, pleasure riding his tone. “You feel so good.”

I peeked up through lazy lids and shivered at the sight of silver eyes burning with sensual hunger staring back at me. His lips drew back and I could see his canines were sharper, longer. Here, then, was the Fae side of him come to life, rising to claim its bonded mate.

“Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you,” he promised and held perfectly still above me, wings flared wide, body poised for love making, but unsure.

I arched beneath him, curling my hips, leading a primitive rhythm that forced him in and out of me. “I told you not to stop,” I gasped, working myself over him since he’d decided to take a moment to wrestle with his unfounded doubts.

He hissed again and looked between us to where my core was pumping over his length, clenching and releasing his shaft. Our curls became damp with our combined arousal as my clenching body urged him on.

Draco went glassy-eyed as he watched me claim him back, and with each thrust, his expression filled with awe. “You are so bloody perfect,” he growled, and grabbing my hips, he took over.

An ardent, shared hunger guided our mating that evening. Instinct-driven possessiveness combined with a firestorm of love, and when the brutal, primal intensiveness of it coalesced into a sharp, beautiful moment that suspended time itself, it was to a mutual understanding that neither of us was master or mistress of this new, delicate relationship. We simply _were._

Together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines borrowed (some altered) from “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series and altered for this chapter's use: 
> 
> “I did not mind stepping out of the shadows, did not mind even being in the shadows to begin with, so long as he was with me.”   
> \- Feyre, A Court of Mist and Fury


	13. Chapter 13

**~.~.~.~.~**

Easter break came at last.

The last two weeks had been utter bliss, every spare moment we’d had, Draco and I had reaffirmed our bond. We were sex-mad for each other. He reassured me it was normal for one of the Fae and their mate to be ravenous for a while as the magical bond between us rejoiced at our acknowledgment of it. It was an exhausting and challenging time for my studies, but I was on cloud nine.

Over the break, I was asked to travel to Draco’s home, to meet his mother and father.

I’d admit later that Narcissa Black-Malfoy, formerly Queen Maev of the Unseelie Court, terrified me despite the fact she was perfectly polite during my visit. Behind that feline smile of hers, however, I saw a predator observing me, weighing my flaws against my strengths.

_“It’s all a game, Hermione…”_

In the end, I guess she’d deigned me too important to her son’s happiness to murder, and it seemed she’d doted on her only child something fierce.

Good thing we were in love down to our toes.

Draco’s father, however… Well, we hadn’t exactly gotten on. I’d figured out within an hour of meeting him that he was a man who manoeuvered through his own hypocrisy to achieve power. For instance, he supported pure-blood supremacy because it was the popular platform of his conservative peers, yet he was married to a female who wasn’t even human and had created a half-breed son. He’d also been willing to overlook my Muggle-born heritage once he’d discovered my Slytherin sorting and my power to control a familiar, which was a rare magical gift in our world.

I’d stayed three days with the elder Malfoys, and then I’d brought Draco home to meet my parents. Tit-for-tat.

As soon as we walked in the front door of the Granger house, I discovered that Malfoy hadn’t been joking when he’d cautioned me not to underestimate Pansy Parkinson’s desire to wreak havoc in my life.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I demanded of my greatest rival and pointed my wand at her.

At my side, Draco had his wand out and aimed at his former lover as well.

“Hermione, language!” my mother scolded, and took both me and Draco in with a single glance. “And put those wands away at once!”

Neither Draco nor I lowered our arms.

“Hello, Granger,” Pansy greeted with false, syrupy sincerity. Her eyes hardened when she turned to my lover. “Malfoy.”

Ooh, now I knew my boyfriend was on her shit list, too, as she’d called him by his last name. She only did that to those of us she’d decided to destroy. Goodie.

“Mum, Dad, leave the room,” I instructed them, my tone hard and not to be challenged. “Now.”

My mother stood up. “Hermione Jean Granger, you’ve gone mad! I told you to put those wands away! This nice, young lady has only come to give you something you’d left at school. She’s here as your friend.”

The smile Pansy gave me was the serpent’s who had cornered the mouse.

“Come now, pet,” Parkinson purred at me, pulling out what appeared to be a photograph. “Don’t you want to see what I’ve come all the way over here to bring you?”

I noted my father gave Pansy a mistrustful eye then, as he seemed to sense he’d been duped. My mother, however, appeared to remain staunchly in the corner of my worst enemy, obviously having been charmed off her feet by such a ‘nice, young lady’.

“I am not a pet, you psychotic bitch,” I snarled at her. “Nor am I a fancy doll to be used and discarded by anyone, male _or_ female.” I glanced quickly at my mother. “And I will not be moulded, broken, or tamed. Not by anyone in this house or out of it. I am tired of games.”

With a quick flick of my wrist, I knocked Parkinson out with a _Stupefy_ spell.

My parents were taken aback, of course.

Draco dropped his wand and looked at me with a combination of pride and amusement. He bent and kissed my cheek, chuckling.

I threw him a grateful smile and then hurried to Parkinson’s side, removing her wand from her person so she couldn’t use it when she awoke. “She’s not my friend,” I told my parents and quickly took the picture Parkinson had held in her hand as well. “In fact, she was one of the girls this year that did everything in her power to make my life miserable.”

My mother looked down on her unconscious ‘guest’, nonplussed. “But she had such lovely manners. She was well-trained, very proper. You must be mistaken.”

I stared hard at her. “Mother, she duped you. That’s what she does. She’s Slytherin.”

“ _You’re_ Slytherin.”

I fought not to roll my eyes. “Yes, but I’m not _her_ kind of Slytherin. I don’t make it my mission in life to destroy people’s reputations, cause them emotional distress, stalk them at their parent’s houses over the Easter break for some nefarious purpose, or cast nasty hexes at them when they’re not looking.”

My mother pointed at the unconscious witch on her couch. “But you just did the latter.”

“Technically, I cast a Stunning Charm, not a hex, and she _was_ looking right at me. I can’t help that she’s slow on the draw.” Using a non-verbal _Incarcerous_ , I bound Parkinson’s limbs in rose vines, complete with thorns. Let her try to get away now. “And did you forget the rest of that list of things I don’t do, particularly the part about ‘nefarious purposes’?” I pointed at my enemy. “This bitch was responsible for putting me in the Hospital Wing sixteen times this last year, and two of those occasions had to do with broken bones and unconsciousness.”

My parents gaped at me.

Of course, they had no clue as to just how bad it had been, as I’d never written home about it and I’d made sure all of my injuries seemed self-sustained, so the teachers and Madam Pomfrey wouldn‘t catch on. 

I just waved my mum and dad off with some excuse about such a thing being part and parcel to wizarding high school.

“Is there some kind of stockade we can have her locked up in, then?” my father asked, glaring down at the fraud who had invaded him home under false pretense. “How about an _oubliette_? Do they still have those in the magical realm? We could toss her down one of those and leave her to rot.”

“Richard!” my mother scolded him and went to Parkinson’s side, gently patting her cheeks in an attempt to wake her up. “You can’t be serious! Why this lovely, young woman can’t be as horrible as that!” She turned hateful eyes upon me. “I’m sure Hermione did something to her to incite Miss Parkinson’s ire. She’s always doing _something_ disgraceful. Never following rules, never displaying proper behaviour for a young lady‒”

I knew my mother resented me. The circumstance of my difficult birth was the reason she could never have any more children, after all. Until that moment, however, I never knew she’d despised me.

I felt that horrible blow all the way to my soul.

She was right, though: despite sitting and learning all her etiquette lessons as a young child, I’d never really behaved quite as she’d expected. There was a bit of wild in me that rebelled against being caged, even if it was just by someone else’s expectations, so I’d always gone out of my way to push back. I let my feral hair do its thing, instead of attempting to tame it into fashionably sleek curls. At Beauxbatons, I’d skipped pianoforte and embroidery, signing up instead for archery and impressionist painting. Rather than skate by on academic mediocrity and attempt to ensnare a husband someday with good looks and submissive refinement, as my mother had wanted, I’d spent hours in the library studying rare knowledge and old magic, ignoring cosmetics, and challenging my teacher’s conclusions at every turn. I’d bitten my nails and twirled my wand and dreamed of creating feral wolves out of water to attack my enemies, while my mother seethed that I would not be brought to heel.

I was nothing but one big disappointment to Eleanor Granger. 

I wasn't the daughter she wanted.

...And maybe that was okay, because I finally knew who I was, and I liked the person I'd become. I was strong, true, smart, and vindictive as hell, and I would never be the victim my mother wanted. I was my own mistress, and I chose who to give pieces of myself to. No one would ever 'master' me. 

"Well done, my starlight," Draco murmured in praise as he bent to kiss my cheek. "You foiled the evil witch and saved the day."

I heard again: _"I love you, thorns and all."_

It was funny that all the things that my mother detested about me were the exact things that my mate adored in me. 

Before I could bother reply to Eleanor's ridiculous accusation, to my utter amazement, my father turned an impressive wall of anger of his own on his spouse. It was restrained, but his voice had gone fifty shades of ice that I’d never heard before. “You know, I wonder why I ever married you, Eleanor. You’re a horrible excuse for a mother and a lousy wife.” He raised a single finger to stop my mum from replying. “Someday, fate’s going to chew you up and spit you out for all the cruelty you inflict upon others with that bitter mouth of yours. I won’t be here to see it, thankfully. I’ll be contacting a solicitor tomorrow to discuss divorce proceedings. It’s long overdue.”

For a moment, there was panic in my mother’s eyes, as if she’d realised she’d gone too far. Clearly, though, after twenty years of marriage, my father was finally at the end of his rope, so I doubted any apology from her would be welcomed by him.

Turning his back on her, he glanced over at me, and there was regret in his eyes. “I want to press charges against Miss Parkinson, if we can. I don’t want her free to hurt you anymore, Hermione. I know I haven’t been the father you wanted, my darling, but I hope you’ll give me a second chance to make things right.”

The room went wavy before my eyes as they filled with tears. My father had always been the weak one in my parent’s relationship. He’d hardly spoke up in all the years I’d known him, let my mother run things as she wanted. I’d resented him for so long for that, but now…

I went to him and let him hug me. I hugged him back.

“I’d like that,” I told him.

My mother escaped the room, but we could hear her sobbing behind her bedroom door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines borrowed (some altered) from “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series and altered for this chapter's use: 
> 
> “I was not a pet, not a doll, not an animal.”  
> – Feyre, A Court of Mist and Fury
> 
> One of Feyre's powers is to make magical water wolves in the novel canon. She is also an excellent archer and an amateur painter.


	14. Chapter 14

**_~.~.~_ **

The picture Parkinson had been holding showed Theo’s two hulking half-brothers smirking into the camera, Theo hanging in the air between them beaten and bloody.

“I know this place,” Draco said, pointing to the trellis behind the two men. “This is where they tortured him the first time when he’d been a child. The rose shed behind his house.”

I Floo-called the Ministry, asking for Hit Wizards to be brought immediately to my parent’s home, as we’d subdued a lunatic-stalker witch who had been threatening us. Then, I looked back at the picture in Draco’s hand. “We just saw Theo on the train ride back to London, so it had to have been within the last three days that this happened,” I said. “God, please let him still be alive.”

I sent a mental thought out to my familiar, who had wanted to stay behind at the castle over the break. The mice, he’d noted over the Christmas holiday in December, tended to come out when most of the students were away, and this was prime hunting time for him.

_“Crooks, can you check to see if Theodore Nott is anywhere in the castle? Hurry, it’s a life-or-death emergency.”_

_“I’ll ask the help of the portraits and the ghosts then,”_ he replied. _“Shall I inform the staff?”_

_“Yes, tell Dumbledore first. It’s time he knew what was going on right under his nose.”_

_“As you wish, Mistress Mine.”_

I was hoping the photo was a hoax, something staged by Parkinson to twist us around and get us to do her bidding. If it wasn’t, Theo was in serious danger. His half-brothers, I gathered from what they’d done to him as a child, had always hated him for being an illegitimate, half-blood bastard. He’d told me during the weeks he’d served as my guard for Draco that he was seen as a stain on the Nott family’s purity, and that the elder Nott only kept Theo around out of a sense of obligation to his mother, the chambermaid who had eventually been murdered by his jealous wife. Apparently, the old crank had actually loved his mistress.

“Miss Parkinson had been here two hours before you arrived,” my father told us. “She’d looked a bit peaked as if she’d run here. Eleanor had offered her tea with sugar to raise her flagging energy. I think she must have rushed the photo over here after taking it.” He looked at the picture, turning a bit green around the gills. “Why would she do this?”

Draco shook his head. “She’s a jealous and deranged creature. I think finding out I was in love with your daughter put her over the edge, sir.”

My father adjusted the spectacles across his nose, looking over the top of them at Draco, giving him the dreaded ‘Dad Stare’.

“You’re in love with my little girl?”

I snickered at the expression on my lover’s face. He looked decidedly caught between Scylla and Charybdis right then. I decided to keep my mouth shut and allow Draco to slither his way around this one.

When the Hit Wizards arrived minutes later, we gave them a quick run-down of what had happened but encouraged them to look at the photo. By then Crooks had checked in with me, too, and he claimed there was no sign of Nott around the castle or on the grounds. The whole place had been turned inside-out in a collaborative effort, but it was clear Theo had not returned to Hogwarts after leaving for the Easter hols.

As two Hit Wizards took Parkinson down to the Ministry for processing for trespassing and to question her regarding possible collusion in a kidnapping and assault, Draco turned towards the remaining members of M.L.E. “I can take you through the wards,” he offered. “I’ve been to Nott Manor before and my father is an associate of the senior Nott. Our magical signatures will be recognised and allowed.”

“I’ll go with,” I offered.

Draco held his hand out to me. “Together,” he said, not missing a beat.

Before I left, I hugged my father goodbye and told him I’d be back as soon as I could.

“He treats you as an equal,” my dad whispered to me before letting me go. “That’s good.”

I kissed him on the cheek, then I took Draco’s hand and we Apparated out to the gates of Nott Manor.

 

* * *

 

While the Hit Wizards raided Theo’s house looking for any sign of our missing boy, Astoria, Blaise, Ginny, Ron, and Harry Apparated into the edge of the Manor's wards in a series of thunderous cracks.

“How-?”

“Your cat,” Potter said with some alacrity. “He told my owl, who told me.”

That impressed me, I had to admit. “You have a soul bond with your familiar?”

He nodded once, but his attention turned towards the house, where the action was happening. I knew Potter wanted to be an Auror someday, or so he’d professed. “Cops are inside, but is anyone searching the back?” he asked.

We all headed in that direction, led through the wards by Draco.

The rose shed was empty, but there was a trail of blood leading further into the overgrowth behind it.

“Sloppy,” Zabini stated as he let his eyes follow where the trail led.

“It’s like they want us to see what’s back there,” Ron added.

That chilling thought had us all tightening our grips on our wands.

There was some rustling, and then the bushes ahead parted…and Luna stepped out. “Theo’s going to need to be taken to St. Mungo’s,” she calmly said, holding her wand loosely in one hand and beaming at them. “The other two will as well. Probably first.”

Harry rushed to her side, ran hands all over her, and then hugged her when he found no visible wounds on her. “Are you okay? What did you _do?”_

Luna smiled and hugged him back. “Theo’s brothers didn’t like TRUTH TELLER. It made them confess everything, including the things they’d done to Theo when he’d been a child. I captured the memories. I think they’re going away for a long time after this.”

Astoria ran behind the bushes, as did Draco and I. Blaise, Ginny, and Ron were hot on our heels.

Theo was lying on the ground, moaning. His two half-brothers were tied together, back-to-back, by an _Incarcerous_ spell. They were babbling and looked glassy-eyed, as if stunned.

A collective sigh of relief left the group, even as Draco moseyed over to his best friend. Hunching down to his side, he nudged Theo awake. “See, this is what happens when you ignore my warnings to stay out of trouble,” he said.

Theo’s lips lifted with a tired smile. He looked pretty badly beaten. It was probably going to take Skele-Gro and a mountain of bruise paste to pretty him up again.

“Lie still,” I cautioned him, kneeling by Theo’s other side. “Help’s on the way.”

Harry and Luna stepped through the bushes just then. The two brutes behind me started screaming the moment they saw my blonde, waif-like friend. Clearly, they were terrified of Luna. I turned and hit them with a _Stupefy_ to shut them up.

“Why?” Theo asked us, looking around at the group of us standing around him in the small clearing through one purple, swollen eye. “Why’d all you come?”

“Because, mate, it’s the family you make, not necessarily the one you’re born into, that matters,” Ron replied. “And this is what family does—we save each other.”

As I looked around at my circle of new friends all crowding around Theo in concern, I thought that possibly, the wisest thing my redheaded friend had ever said. 

 

* * *

 

Pansy Parkinson was finished, just as Luna had once predicted.

Once the story came out that she’d hired Theo’s half-brothers to torture and brutalize him, she was officially charged with a series of felonies, on top of the misdemeanor trespassing charge. Others came forward, then, to add their testimonies and charges to the horrid things she’d done over the years to crawl to the top of the bone heap. The current sentencing possibility was somewhere in the high double-digits. If convicted, she wasn’t ever seeing the light of day again. Of course, it went without saying that she was expelled from Hogwarts, too.

The Queen Under the Mountain was dethroned. Permanently.

Shamed in the newspapers for his daughter’s ruthless, scandalous, ‘unladylike’ behaviour, Lord Parkinson stepped down from his seat as Leader of the Conservative Party and retired from politics a month later.

Draco’s father happily accepted the nomination as a replacement, of course…and suddenly, I was Lucius Malfoy’s new best friend for helping to ruin his rival.

Theo’s two half-brothers were, according to prosecutors, also bound for Azkaban for the rest of their lives as well. I think they’d preferred it to the threat of being locked in a room with Luna, honestly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines borrowed (some altered) from “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series and altered for this chapter's use: 
> 
> “It seems like you ignored my warning to stay out of trouble.”   
> \- Rhysand, A Court of Thorns and Roses
> 
> “It is the family you make, not the one you are born into, that matters.”   
> – Feyre, A Court of Wings and Ruin


	15. Chapter 15

**_~.~.~.~.~_ **

Two months after that day at Nott Manor, we all graduated Hogwarts.

Ironically, I tied for the most N.E.W.T.s in the school’s history with one of Ron’s elder brothers. My tutor student didn’t fare as well, but he’d still managed to snag ‘Exceeds Expectations’ in four of his final tests. I was satisfied with that result, and I think, so was Ron.

We’d all sat around the night before, drinking and talking future plans…

Harry and Luna were both intending to go off to Auror training together. The Head Auror, a fellow named ‘Mad-Eye’ Moody, seemed very interested in Luna’s TRUTH TELLER for interrogations reasons.

Blaise and Ginny were still bickering about which Quidditch teams they were going to join together, having received multiple offer letters each. They refused to tour separately.

Astoria had hooked up with Madam Rosmerta, much to everyone’s surprise, and they had already begun the plans for building a wizarding disco down the street from The Three Broomsticks, where the old Shrieking Shack had once stood and was now being torn down.

Ron was courting Lavender Brown again, dazzling her with a slew of new joke and gag inventions he’d come up with under his twin brothers’ WWW brand. Apparently, he already had a job in their Diagon Alley shop, was dreaming of opening up a franchise store in Hogsmeade someday.

Theo planned to undertake Healer training at St. Mungo’s. His long-term goals were to create a spell to heal burn scars and to live as far away from Nott Manor and his loveless father as possible.

“What about you two?” Astoria asked me and Draco.

We looked at each other.

_“It’s all a game, Hermione…”_

In this case, it certainly had been. A game my lover and I had played on the others, having become engaged two months ago, keeping it a secret for ourselves.The gig was up, though, and we both knew it was time for some secrets to be revealed.

Some.

Draco kissed the back of my left hand, holding it up for everyone to see. The matching tattoos that wreathed our wrists, which hailed back to his Fae heritage and its traditions of mate bonds, weren’t as self-explanatory, but the diamond ring certainly was.

“Oh my god!” my best girlfriend screamed in excitement and ran to my side. She threw her arms around me, nearly knocking me on my bum, squealing with happiness. “I knew it! I knew Malfoy could push your buttons just right! Didn’t I tell you, girl?”

Suddenly, we were surrounded by our Inner Circle of friends all congratulating us. As I looked around at their smiling, happy faces I realised that these were the people who had always accepted me for who and what I was, who had taught me to overcome my fears, who had listened to me and offered advice when things were at their lowest. They’d had my back. Someday, I would have theirs, when they had need. For these were my people, my Fifth House, my Night Court…my family.

It seemed I’d been wrong: transferring to Hogwarts had been the _best_ decision I’d ever made.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In ACOTAR, mates receive a unique tattoo that they share after accepting the mate bond between them (as it's a type of magical contract, of sorts, and all such things in ACOTAR are sealed with a tattoo).


	16. Epilogue #1

**~.~.~.~.~**

**EPILOGUE #1**

**~.~.~.~.~**

To my surprise, Madam Maxine had been in the crowd of graduation attendees.

Curious as to why she’d come to Hogwarts after everything she’d said about me and done to me, I sent Crooks to snoop on her private conversation with Professor Dumbledore, and listened in through his ears.

 _“She did eet, Dumbly-dore!”_ Madam Maxine said. _“As I knew she could! She has brought great change to England, as your Seer predicted. She mated zee Fairy Prince, took top honours here at Hogwarts, proved the worth of all Muggle-borns, became mistress of ‘er own destiny, and tumbled zee evil Parkinson family’s reign forever... But I wonder if we did not do ‘er a disservice with our deception, mon ami? She was badly hurt that I forced ‘er to back home to your shores to fulfill this destiny.”_

 _“My dear Madame, I do believe that if Miss Granger could hear us now_ _-”_ I swore by the way my Headmaster’s voice raised a bit there at the end that he was knew I was listening in. _“_ _-she might forgive us our Slytherin-like cunning to achieve our aims in this instance, especially as it will put her in the Minister’s seat someday.”_

 _“And make ‘er husband King of the Unseelie Kingdom, and their son zee High Lord of zee Night Court, too, oui?”_  

_“Indeed.”_

I nearly fainted at that.

How did they know I was engaged to Draco?

…How did they know I was pregnant?

 _“I believe, Mistress Mine,”_ Crooks snickered at me, _“that is what Slytherin House calls ‘the long con’.”_


	17. Epilogue #2

**~.~.~.~.~**

**EPILOGUE #2**

**~.~.~.~.~**

“You’re absolutely certain?”

Narcissa’s blue gaze never wavered. “Bellatrix is dead, without issue. Andromeda has assumed the throne. Her daughter, Nymphadora, is next in line for the throne. Sadly, she is barren, and Andromeda is now past the age of child-bearing and cannot yield fruit. Their lines will become extinct, paving the way for you to someday be King, Draco. For the moment, you are merely third in line, but the heir-apparent, regardless of my abdication, and with that opportunity comes responsibility.”

“I know,” he said, sighing in frustration. He ran a hand through his long, blond hair, freeing it from the tie that held it back at the nape of his neck. He’d been growing his hair out since our marriage soon after graduation, in the way of Fae males. “I just hoped I could escape it all like you did, Mother.”

Narcissa’s mouth tightened, but her gaze dropped to my rounded belly. “It means the child will assume your title once you take the throne, too, you realise. You will be King of the Unseelie Kingdom and your son-”

“High Lord of the Night Court,” I said, recalling the conversation I’d overheard that day at Hogwarts, months earlier.

-Which meant I would be Minister of Magic for England someday if Dumbledore’s prophecy was right.

_“It’s all a game, Hermione…”_

As I rubbed over the area where my baby slept under my heart, suddenly I understood that my mother had been right all along.


End file.
